I consider myself a successful podcaster. I started a show, put it up on the web, and now I average about a thousand downloads a week with listeners in 20+ countries. My trick? I did what I wanted to do and said - screw it when it came to everyone else. I don't listen to other people's podcasts. I don't check out the competition. I submitted myself to all the podcasting search engines.
Save all your money on dumb books like this and follow these steps:
1/ make a website & email address so people can write you
2/ make sure you get listed on iTunes
3/ update regularly and keep your filesizes small.
Boom.
Year with Lowest Avg Rank: (1999) 22. Final Fantasy VIII (1999) 27. Valkyrie Profile (1999)
Year with Highest Avg Rank: (1993) 45. Ogre Battle (1993) 78. Torneko Mysterious Dungeon (1993) 80. Streetfighter 2 Turbo (1993) 97. Secret of Mana (1993)
I have to give them credit since this poll actually spans 21 years of gaming with no individual year with more than eight games (8% of total list)!
Years with Most Games Listed: 1990, 1992 and 2004 (each with eight)
8. Final Fantasy III (1990) 14. Dragon Quest IV (1990) 35. F-Zero (1990) 58. Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei II (1990) 61. Super Mario World (1990) 77. Super Monaco GP (1990) 82. Final Fight (1990) 94. Saga 2 (1990)
11. Dragon Quest V (1992) 12. Far East of Eden 2 (1992) 15. Final Fantasy V (1992) 20. Streetfighter II (1992) 53. Romancing Saga (1992) 59. Shin Megami Tensei (1992) 64. Puyo Puyo (1992) 69. Super Mario Kart (1992)
4. Dragon Quest VIII (2004) 26. Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004) 40. Dragon Quest 5 (PS2 remake) 2004 62. To Heart II (2004) 71. Monster Hunter (2004) 75. Gran Turismo 4 (2004) 76. GTA: Vice City (2004) 92. Tales of Rebirth (2004)
One interesting aspect is always how much more popular Dragon's Quest is in the Japan as compared to the US. While Dragon Warrior is a popular series, Final Fantasy is definately more well-known and traditionally was better marketed. However, you can see that DQ is strongly represented in the list and actually has a lower average rank (though that's three less games).
Years where one or more Dragon Quest games were released: 2004, 2000, 1995, 1992, 1990, 1988, 1987, 1986 (9 games listed; avg rank: 18)
Years where one or more Final Fantasy games were listed: 2003, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1997, 1994, 1992, 1991, 1990, 1988, 1987 (12 games listed; avg rank: 24)
Exactly. And the Slate Article points out - all this author did was poorly recap the 8/20 speculation from the Financial Times. I hope I can write (without having pesky things like research or interviews) about whatever is next week's headline in Time Magazine and people will fancy that a Slashdot article.
Wow. His evidence is startling:
#1/ Buying Skype would cost a lot of money
#2/ Google just raised a lot of money
QED.
Based on these facts, I think that Google is going to buy Chuck E Cheese (NYSE: CEC). I submit as evidence the fact that Google is not yet in the Children's Entertainment Pizza n' Token business and certainly being able to put online ads on the walls around a Chuck E Cheese would be very lucrative. Children are highly impressionable and Google has lots of money. QED.
At the very least, any baseless opinion article should be sent in by at least a different person than the actual author. Of course you believe your own made-up bull. SIGH.
Sims was the title I was especially amazed they missed. We're talking about a game that really made a huge impact on the videogame industry, not to mention brought in a demographic that wasn't playing videogames. 1 Sims title is greater than 4 Final Fantasy slots any day.
When there is a secondary market in selling in-game items (like gold) there is a greater incentive for people to install and run bots. Then, they take that gold and sell it on ebay. So, when you cut down on the market for re-selling these sort of items, you also decrease the number of people who are running illegal bots.
Dune is a terrific boardgame by Avalon Hills that was published back in 1979. It takes a long time to play a game by email (6 months to a year is not uncommon) but there are dozens of people who do it each year. The game takes about 6 hours to play in a face-to-face format so playing by mail makes it much longer. However, in the recent years, there have been some really neat rules variations and expansions implemented.
The AH Dune (re-released in a French format by Descrates Games a few years ago) is one of the most interesting and compelling strategy board games I've ever played. I grew up in a household with two copies: products of my father & uncle's Science Fiction Hayward Area book club. The game is one of Avalon Hill's most famous and until eBay and the French re-release, copies would sometimes go for more than $100.
What makes it terrific is the six unique characters (and abilities) that are based on the books. Furthermore, it's a game that allows for alliances. There are a lot of rules clarifications that have come up over the years, but overall it remains a very positive and fun game.
Social interaction? It takes somewhere between three and eight hours to play. (I'd estimate 4-5 as a regular face-to-face session.) It's inspired a pretty active Play-by-email yahoo group (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/DuneBoardGame/) It's not easy to find people at college who are willing to sit down for a six hour game, but most everyone who does has wanted to come back for more. When you consider the expansion packs, the basic and advanced rulesets, and the fact that people will spend 1-2 years playing these games, I have to give the creators a lot of credit. It remains as my favorite game of both my childhood and my life now.
I was wondering if anyone else caught that jibe in at the EVIL FREE SOFTWARE. Remember, unless you pay for it -- it's bound to be malicious! With the collary (of course) being "Software you pay for is only good for your system. It will not break and damage your computer. It is designed _perfectly_." * SIGH *
47 Upgrade phone booths to Wi-Fi
I disagree. During the big blackout in August, it was the phone booths in NYC that were still working. The push to make everything wireless would hurt, especially things like Emergancy services in these sort of situations.
There are actually a few NES one-handed controllers to display.
Quickshot XII: The Joysticks of the NES age had both buttons accessible and you could play games with one hand. Unfortunally, directional controls are a PAIN with joysticks in most games.
Game Handler: I've never seen one of these before, but it obviously seems custom-made for the purpose of one-handed gameplay. Interesting design.
ASCII Stick L5: Scroll down a bit and you'll see it. It's held in your hand sort of like a hand-fan.
One Handed: Scroll down about half way and to the controller with the caption: "Looks like a freaking droid from Star Wars". This is the controller I originally posted the picture about. It's held sort of like a stopwatch.
Here is a pic of a one-handed controller I own for the NES. It was supposely designed for RPGs. The idea was that you could draw a map with one hand and hold the controller in your other hand. Picture of One Handed NES controller
I just picked up the GBA title _Activision Anthology_ which has a collection of over 55 titles originally designed for the Atari 2600. I have to say that some of the prototypes/unreleased games are pretty unique/original. Kabobber was unique and I'm happy having Video Euchre on a handheld platform. Original games in my book!
Nice try. Except you bought the misguided premise of the other article (piracy has dropped cost of PS2 discs), which in terms of economics is completely off.
It seems nice to try and relate these stories -- but in reality, they're not similar.
The reasons that China has lower PS2 games has to do with:
a) disposable income (less than US/Western Europe)
b) comparable products (ie, VCDs/DVDs for $1)
c) lax IP protection laws.
It's possible that they might start selling Windows products overseas for very low rates, but it will remain high in the US. The reason is simple: matching the currency price to market they are in. It's not about piracy. As other people have pointed out, it's the same premise why drug companies will sell cheap generic versions in Developing Nations and higher priced pharms here in the US. Simply put, we can afford it.
Well, those people you mentioned (Lei Bei, Lu Bu, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, etc.) are all characters from Chinese history. A game like _Romance of the Three Kingdoms_ (Koei) helps illuminate how China was divided into different regions and these were all famous generals and warlords. There was (is) a book called "Romance of Three Kingdoms" which tells the stories of some of these most famous figures.
_Nobunga's Ambition_ actually takes place in Japan.
As for _Destiny of an Emperor_, there was actually a Famicom-only sequel made. You can find it online and a translation effort was completed. (Search for 'Destiny Translations', I believe that was the group.)
He's right.
I look it up and found that Japan has a current population of around 127 million.
If you use a tool like Creative Research's Sample Size Calculator ( http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm )you'd find that you only need a sample size 15,092 to obtain a 99% confidence level of accuracy +/- 1.05%
If there really was 15,670 people surveyed [the number of votes], that's pretty good work.
Dragon Warrior IV is probably the most complete game ever developed for the NES. The cart size claimed to be 8 megabytes, but discussion on emulation boards suggested that it was only 4 megs. That's still huge compared to most of the games.
There is excellent gameplay, an expansive universe, multiple NPCs, several chapters of gameplay, an interesting storyline, and some beautiful graphics and music. It was the last big NES project that I know of and it still usually sells for $30-$40 online.
I would definately rank it as probably the best well-crafted complete game. Enix made some good stuff. * sigh *
I'm a pretty avid NES collector. I don't play any systems more advanced and so my view of 'goodness of games' is basically relative to other NES games.
I think certain franchines (such as Final Fantasy) have gone on to do wonderful things, but all things considered, I feel that "NES Dragon Warrior IV" is probably a better game than "NES Final Fantasy".
I wonder how much of this list is influenced by how these games were further developed on other platforms. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem terribly bias in that catergory. However, I believe it was done in the US, we'd have exactly that problem.
I'm surprised 'Destiny of an Emperor' didn't make the list, because that was a really solid title. Also, there are several sports titles (like the excellent Famicom-only Soccer games) which aren't listed. I would also expect a historical strategy game like 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' or some other Koei title.
I'm exceptionally surprised that 'Goonies II' made the list because that's a real random footnote in the history of NES games.
I always love reading articles with statistics. I'm glad that this article was written.
The first thing to keep in mind is that the writer predominately chose games which generally had received high review scores. So, in essence this article was really about whether there is a review bias among highly-rated games. I think this point is important because it means that each site is generally debating exactly how "very good" each of these games are.
Which brings us to looking at the rating systems of these sites -- can you tell the difference between a 7.0 and 8.0 game? The author should have translated the results for each site back into the units that the site employed. I don't read a lot of gaming reviews (since the only consoles I own are an Atari 2600 and NES) so unfortunally I'm willfully ignornant about how these sites are set up. Still, if a hypothetical site only gives out ratings in terms of zero to five stars, then each unit is worth 20 points (using the author's scale). So, if we're talking about 9 point discrepancy, we're still speaking about less than half a star on that site's rating system. The author converted everything into a 100 point system, but failed to convert back for the conclusion. I think this would be relevant too.
The one thing I was disappointed was that he ended up looking at the discrepancy from the average score for each site. I would rather he considered the Standard Deviation from the mean instead of simply averaging the deviations together. This way, the results aren't so skewed should one particular game have an enourmous deviation. Yes, the CSV file is now online so I could do this and perhaps I will just for my own curiousity. In a similar vein, one could perform chi-square tests with the results between each of the sites to give a better measure of whether or not a bias appeared.
I would like to hear what a real security expert like Jeff Goldblum had to say, though. After all, he managed to interface a Mac with an Alien computer. I mean, he's no Sandra Bullock, but he's still a pretty good "hacker". (That's the correct term, right?)
Slashdot Mirror
I consider myself a successful podcaster. I started a show, put it up on the web, and now I average about a thousand downloads a week with listeners in 20+ countries. My trick? I did what I wanted to do and said - screw it when it came to everyone else. I don't listen to other people's podcasts. I don't check out the competition. I submitted myself to all the podcasting search engines. Save all your money on dumb books like this and follow these steps: 1/ make a website & email address so people can write you 2/ make sure you get listed on iTunes 3/ update regularly and keep your filesizes small. Boom.
1985 - 2 entries - avg rank: 54
1986 - 4 entries - avg rank: 59.75
1987 - 5 entries - avg rank: 61.6
1988 - 4 entries - avg rank: 58.5
1989 - 3 entries - avg rank: 62
1990 - 8 entries - avg rank: 53.62
1991 - 4 entries - avg rank: 44.75
1992 - 8 entries - avg rank: 37.87
1993 - 4 entries - avg rank: 75
1994 - 6 entries - avg rank: 52.16
1995 - 6 entries - avg rank: 31.16
1996 - 4 entries - avg rank: 46.25
1997 - 4 entries - avg rank: 59.5
1998 - 6 entries - avg rank: 28.83
1999 - 2 entries - avg rank: 24.5
2000 - 5 entries - avg rank: 46.2
2001 - 3 entries - avg rank: 41.33
2002 - 5 entries - avg rank: 51.6
2003 - 2 entries - avg rank: 51
2004 - 8 entries - avg rank: 55.75
2005 - 7 entries - avg rank: 65.42
Year with Lowest Avg Rank: (1999)
22. Final Fantasy VIII (1999)
27. Valkyrie Profile (1999)
Year with Highest Avg Rank: (1993)
45. Ogre Battle (1993)
78. Torneko Mysterious Dungeon (1993)
80. Streetfighter 2 Turbo (1993)
97. Secret of Mana (1993)
I have to give them credit since this poll actually spans 21 years of gaming with no individual year with more than eight games (8% of total list)!
Years with Most Games Listed: 1990, 1992 and 2004 (each with eight)
8. Final Fantasy III (1990)
14. Dragon Quest IV (1990)
35. F-Zero (1990)
58. Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei II (1990)
61. Super Mario World (1990)
77. Super Monaco GP (1990)
82. Final Fight (1990)
94. Saga 2 (1990)
11. Dragon Quest V (1992)
12. Far East of Eden 2 (1992)
15. Final Fantasy V (1992)
20. Streetfighter II (1992)
53. Romancing Saga (1992)
59. Shin Megami Tensei (1992)
64. Puyo Puyo (1992)
69. Super Mario Kart (1992)
4. Dragon Quest VIII (2004)
26. Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004)
40. Dragon Quest 5 (PS2 remake) 2004
62. To Heart II (2004)
71. Monster Hunter (2004)
75. Gran Turismo 4 (2004)
76. GTA: Vice City (2004)
92. Tales of Rebirth (2004)
One interesting aspect is always how much more popular Dragon's Quest is in the Japan as compared to the US. While Dragon Warrior is a popular series, Final Fantasy is definately more well-known and traditionally was better marketed. However, you can see that DQ is strongly represented in the list and actually has a lower average rank (though that's three less games).
Years where one or more Dragon Quest games were released:
2004, 2000, 1995, 1992, 1990, 1988, 1987, 1986 (9 games listed; avg rank: 18)
Years where one or more Final Fantasy games were listed:
2003, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1997, 1994, 1992, 1991, 1990, 1988, 1987 (12 games listed; avg rank: 24)
Gaming will be a sport the same day that professional wrestling is included in the Olympics.
I try and check lostlevels, atariage and nesworld at least once a week. Geez, next they'll mention that Flashblack 2.0 has been released!
Exactly. And the Slate Article points out - all this author did was poorly recap the 8/20 speculation from the Financial Times. I hope I can write (without having pesky things like research or interviews) about whatever is next week's headline in Time Magazine and people will fancy that a Slashdot article.
Wow. His evidence is startling: #1/ Buying Skype would cost a lot of money #2/ Google just raised a lot of money QED. Based on these facts, I think that Google is going to buy Chuck E Cheese (NYSE: CEC). I submit as evidence the fact that Google is not yet in the Children's Entertainment Pizza n' Token business and certainly being able to put online ads on the walls around a Chuck E Cheese would be very lucrative. Children are highly impressionable and Google has lots of money. QED. At the very least, any baseless opinion article should be sent in by at least a different person than the actual author. Of course you believe your own made-up bull. SIGH.
Sims was the title I was especially amazed they missed. We're talking about a game that really made a huge impact on the videogame industry, not to mention brought in a demographic that wasn't playing videogames. 1 Sims title is greater than 4 Final Fantasy slots any day.
When there is a secondary market in selling in-game items (like gold) there is a greater incentive for people to install and run bots. Then, they take that gold and sell it on ebay. So, when you cut down on the market for re-selling these sort of items, you also decrease the number of people who are running illegal bots.
Dune is a terrific boardgame by Avalon Hills that was published back in 1979. It takes a long time to play a game by email (6 months to a year is not uncommon) but there are dozens of people who do it each year. The game takes about 6 hours to play in a face-to-face format so playing by mail makes it much longer. However, in the recent years, there have been some really neat rules variations and expansions implemented.
COMEDY = TRAGEDY - PANTS
One of the functions of sex is for reproducing. I think there are lots of analogies about virus multiplying and file copying.
The AH Dune (re-released in a French format by Descrates Games a few years ago) is one of the most interesting and compelling strategy board games I've ever played. I grew up in a household with two copies: products of my father & uncle's Science Fiction Hayward Area book club. The game is one of Avalon Hill's most famous and until eBay and the French re-release, copies would sometimes go for more than $100.
e /) It's not easy to find people at college who are willing to sit down for a six hour game, but most everyone who does has wanted to come back for more. When you consider the expansion packs, the basic and advanced rulesets, and the fact that people will spend 1-2 years playing these games, I have to give the creators a lot of credit. It remains as my favorite game of both my childhood and my life now.
What makes it terrific is the six unique characters (and abilities) that are based on the books. Furthermore, it's a game that allows for alliances. There are a lot of rules clarifications that have come up over the years, but overall it remains a very positive and fun game.
Social interaction? It takes somewhere between three and eight hours to play. (I'd estimate 4-5 as a regular face-to-face session.) It's inspired a pretty active Play-by-email yahoo group (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/DuneBoardGam
I was wondering if anyone else caught that jibe in at the EVIL FREE SOFTWARE. Remember, unless you pay for it -- it's bound to be malicious! With the collary (of course) being "Software you pay for is only good for your system. It will not break and damage your computer. It is designed _perfectly_." * SIGH *
//e without the Adware.
Back to my Apple
47 Upgrade phone booths to Wi-Fi
I disagree. During the big blackout in August, it was the phone booths in NYC that were still working. The push to make everything wireless would hurt, especially things like Emergancy services in these sort of situations.
There are actually a few NES one-handed controllers to display.
Quickshot XII: The Joysticks of the NES age had both buttons accessible and you could play games with one hand. Unfortunally, directional controls are a PAIN with joysticks in most games.
Game Handler: I've never seen one of these before, but it obviously seems custom-made for the purpose of one-handed gameplay. Interesting design.
ASCII Stick L5: Scroll down a bit and you'll see it. It's held in your hand sort of like a hand-fan.
One Handed: Scroll down about half way and to the controller with the caption: "Looks like a freaking droid from Star Wars". This is the controller I originally posted the picture about. It's held sort of like a stopwatch.
Cool, no?
Here is a pic of a one-handed controller I own for the NES. It was supposely designed for RPGs. The idea was that you could draw a map with one hand and hold the controller in your other hand.
Picture of One Handed NES controller
I just picked up the GBA title _Activision Anthology_ which has a collection of over 55 titles originally designed for the Atari 2600. I have to say that some of the prototypes/unreleased games are pretty unique/original. Kabobber was unique and I'm happy having Video Euchre on a handheld platform. Original games in my book!
Nice try. Except you bought the misguided premise of the other article (piracy has dropped cost of PS2 discs), which in terms of economics is completely off. It seems nice to try and relate these stories -- but in reality, they're not similar. The reasons that China has lower PS2 games has to do with: a) disposable income (less than US/Western Europe) b) comparable products (ie, VCDs/DVDs for $1) c) lax IP protection laws. It's possible that they might start selling Windows products overseas for very low rates, but it will remain high in the US. The reason is simple: matching the currency price to market they are in. It's not about piracy. As other people have pointed out, it's the same premise why drug companies will sell cheap generic versions in Developing Nations and higher priced pharms here in the US. Simply put, we can afford it.
Well, those people you mentioned (Lei Bei, Lu Bu, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, etc.) are all characters from Chinese history. A game like _Romance of the Three Kingdoms_ (Koei) helps illuminate how China was divided into different regions and these were all famous generals and warlords. There was (is) a book called "Romance of Three Kingdoms" which tells the stories of some of these most famous figures. _Nobunga's Ambition_ actually takes place in Japan. As for _Destiny of an Emperor_, there was actually a Famicom-only sequel made. You can find it online and a translation effort was completed. (Search for 'Destiny Translations', I believe that was the group.)
He's right. I look it up and found that Japan has a current population of around 127 million. If you use a tool like Creative Research's Sample Size Calculator ( http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm )you'd find that you only need a sample size 15,092 to obtain a 99% confidence level of accuracy +/- 1.05% If there really was 15,670 people surveyed [the number of votes], that's pretty good work.
Dragon Warrior IV is probably the most complete game ever developed for the NES. The cart size claimed to be 8 megabytes, but discussion on emulation boards suggested that it was only 4 megs. That's still huge compared to most of the games. There is excellent gameplay, an expansive universe, multiple NPCs, several chapters of gameplay, an interesting storyline, and some beautiful graphics and music. It was the last big NES project that I know of and it still usually sells for $30-$40 online. I would definately rank it as probably the best well-crafted complete game. Enix made some good stuff. * sigh *
I'm a pretty avid NES collector. I don't play any systems more advanced and so my view of 'goodness of games' is basically relative to other NES games.
I think certain franchines (such as Final Fantasy) have gone on to do wonderful things, but all things considered, I feel that "NES Dragon Warrior IV" is probably a better game than "NES Final Fantasy".
I wonder how much of this list is influenced by how these games were further developed on other platforms. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem terribly bias in that catergory. However, I believe it was done in the US, we'd have exactly that problem.
I'm surprised 'Destiny of an Emperor' didn't make the list, because that was a really solid title. Also, there are several sports titles (like the excellent Famicom-only Soccer games) which aren't listed. I would also expect a historical strategy game like 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' or some other Koei title.
I'm exceptionally surprised that 'Goonies II' made the list because that's a real random footnote in the history of NES games.
To paraphrase David Cross, "If someone doesn't finish Metroid Prime in under two hours, then the terrorists have won."
I always love reading articles with statistics. I'm glad that this article was written.
The first thing to keep in mind is that the writer predominately chose games which generally had received high review scores. So, in essence this article was really about whether there is a review bias among highly-rated games. I think this point is important because it means that each site is generally debating exactly how "very good" each of these games are.
Which brings us to looking at the rating systems of these sites -- can you tell the difference between a 7.0 and 8.0 game? The author should have translated the results for each site back into the units that the site employed.
I don't read a lot of gaming reviews (since the only consoles I own are an Atari 2600 and NES) so unfortunally I'm willfully ignornant about how these sites are set up. Still, if a hypothetical site only gives out ratings in terms of zero to five stars, then each unit is worth 20 points (using the author's scale). So, if we're talking about 9 point discrepancy, we're still speaking about less than half a star on that site's rating system. The author converted everything into a 100 point system, but failed to convert back for the conclusion. I think this would be relevant too.
The one thing I was disappointed was that he ended up looking at the discrepancy from the average score for each site. I would rather he considered the Standard Deviation from the mean instead of simply averaging the deviations together. This way, the results aren't so skewed should one particular game have an enourmous deviation.
Yes, the CSV file is now online so I could do this and perhaps I will just for my own curiousity.
In a similar vein, one could perform chi-square tests with the results between each of the sites to give a better measure of whether or not a bias appeared.
Who is Bill Gates?
I would like to hear what a real security expert like Jeff Goldblum had to say, though. After all, he managed to interface a Mac with an Alien computer. I mean, he's no Sandra Bullock, but he's still a pretty good "hacker". (That's the correct term, right?)