BTW, I think that a good, functional rating system is the only way that we get to have the full spectrum of games available to everyone.
Exactly. I recall that before the movie ratings system was introduced, there were horribly strict regulations on what a movie could have, content-wise. Among other things, husbands and wives were not allowed to sleep in the same bed. It's implied that members of the opposite gender who weren't married couldn't either. Then the ratings system was introduced, and people could put things that weren't okay for a five-year old to see in their movies because everyone was warned beforehand.
Videogames did the same thing, pre-ESRB. Nintendo was incredibly strict as to what was acceptable content in their games (they still are, to a lesser extent.) Sega did their own ratings system, so they allowed a lot more through. Then Mortal Kombat happened, which caused the ESRB, and now we have the situation we have now, with Lieberman bitching all the way. Reguardless of how asinine it might be sometimes, the ratings system is still a necessary (and helpful) thing.
Exactly. I remember hearing somewhere that kids surveyed said that they were affected more by the news reports of real-life violence (ie the war in Iraq, 9-11) than they were by fictional violenct. Why? BECAUSE MOST KIDS AREN'T DUMBASSES. THEY KNOW THAT THE VIOLENCE IN MOVIES AND VIDEO GAMES ISN'T REAL.
Exactly. These are company policies, not federal or state laws, at the moment. These companies are simply bending to the will of the whiny parents who are blaming all of society's ills on violent media.
Yeah, the GBA is being used for a lot of SNES ports, just like the GBC was used for NES ports (The problem with both of these, of course, is that they both don't have the same screen aspect ratio as the SNES and NES.)
Personally, I want to see Square port some of their SNES games to the GBA. There wouldn't be problems with slowdowns like with the PSX ports (since that was mostly due to load times.) Portable Chrono Trigger? Hell yeah.
Exactly. Linux won't be a viable alternative for most people until people come out with a distro that's as idiot-proof and easy to use as Windows or OS X. This means, among other things, making it so that you would never have to use the command line. Being able to use all of their Windows software on Linux wouldn't hurt either (and I know they're working on that.)
Each type of system(console/PC) is strong at different types of games. RPGs and FPSs are usually best in the realm of the PC. Sports games on the other hand, I always find to be much more playable on a console. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
Exactly. I can't imagine playing Starcraft without a mouse (Starcraft 64), and I also can't imagine playing the PC version of Metal Gear Solid 2 on a keyboard (or on anything other than my Playstation controller hooked up to a USB adaptor, for that matter.) You can't imagine playing any games with a controller because the only games you've played are designed around a keyboard/mouse combo.
Sony doesn't need to 'kill' the Xbox right now. At the moment, it's not a major threat. On your next point, there is a linux kit for the PS2 that you can order direct from Sony (hard drive, keyboard, mouse, VGA adaptor, broadband unit, some modified version of RedHat) though that's mostly for the hardcore Linux geeks.
Sony has already released a broadband adaptor and will release a hard drive (not compatible with the PS2 linux one) for their system, though I doubt the'll sell well to anyone who doesn't want to play Final Fantasy XI. I can most definetly see Sony including a broadband adaptor and a hard drive with the PS3, though, seeing as the XBox has shown what you can do with them.
And that's exactly why they would drop the price. Whatever money they may lose by dropping the price will be regained over time through software royalties, so it's no big deal if they drop the price now. I'm not sure if they'd drop it down to $99, but they will most probably drop the price for the holidays.
This was actually a change. In the Japanese version, they were named after condiments (Soy Sauce, Vinegar, and Mayonaise(sp?), if I recall correctly.) This became a problem when the sequel came out and one of the 40-some playable characters' names was Slash, which they had to change to Nikki in the US version to avoid confusion.
My dad, who spends a lot of time on the computer but is not remotely techno-literate, now uses Firebird almost exclusively, mostly because on his (formerly our) crappy old 400MHz K6-2, an assload of popups from IE, and IE's general bloat, slows it down a lot. Firebird makes a huge difference there. He now only uses IE for sites that don't play nice with non-IE browsers.
Thunderbird is a different story; however, Thunderbird is still at 0.2. I use it for my mail, but I don't do much with my mail aside from getting it and reading it and occasionally writing a letter. People who do fancy things with filters and stuff may not like it as much, but it suits my needs just fine.
You could probably score a fair amount of money by buying a bunch of these bundles and reselling the systems and the games separatley- sell the GC for a little below the street price and make up for it by selling the collection disk, which will probably go for a good amount, separatley.
Actually, I don't think they're including the game boy player anymore. They're replacing it with this promotion- the picture of the package in this article says nothing about the game boy player.
That would be sweet-ass, though, if they did put that in there too.
sort of how Square did with its Final Fantasy re-releases for the playstation.
Ah... hate to break it to you buddy, but they didn't do much to the FF re-releases. Well, they updated the FF1&2 re-relases graphically, but they took those graphics from the Wonderswan Color port they made. The PSX versions of FF4-6 and Chrono Trigger are basically the same games running on top of a shitty SNES emulator.
So was what I said, so that makes us even or something. Sorry for causing any undue confusion, just my lame attempt at trying to get modded up as funny.:)
Looking at Newell's statement, I guess they've known that someone was going to pull something like this since the 19th (when they discovered that someone copied the source code,) so it probably was the leak that caused the delay.
That's because for some reason all the code of HL1 is in there (my guess is they just had it all there for convinience so they could easily deal with any HL1 code they needed to use) and HL1 was based off of the Quake 1 engine (which was made by ID).
If it was delayed today, I'd agree, but it was delayed days before; however, I wouldn't be surprised if it was delayed further so they can alter the code enought to render any cheats that could be made with this useless. At the very least, they're probably glad they delayed it now.
Nintendo won't die over here. They still have a monopoly on portable systems (for now, at least, Sony could change that, we'll have to see,) and there are enough people who want to play Metroid and Zelda and Mario that they'll still be able to make a good profit here; however, I can see them being the Apple of the console market here.
Back in the days of the NES, Nintendo had the rights to release Tetris for video game consoles, and Tengen had the rights to release Tetris for computers. Tengen made their own version of Teris for the NES, claiming that they could because the NES was a computer. Their evidence was the fact that Nintendo was planning on relasing a keyboard(vaporware) and disk drive(only released in Japan) for the system. They lost, and had to destroy a bunch of Tengen Tetris cartridges. There might be a ROM of it floating around somewhere.
Metal Gear Solid 2, a game which I have been playing a lot of recently, wasn't really "revolutionary", yes. But you can only be revolutionary once. On the level of gameplay, they took what they had in MGS1 and perfected it to such an extent that it's hard for me to play the original anymore. The improvements were so great that they're going back and re-doing the first game, adding in the gameplay mechanics of the second.
You could say the same about other series, too. Blizzard hasn't made any really revolutionary RTS game since they practically invented the genre with Warcraft 1, but in subsequent games (WC2, Starcraft, WC3) they have attempted to improve the formula. Does a game have to be something "new" and "different" to be good?
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. I recall that before the movie ratings system was introduced, there were horribly strict regulations on what a movie could have, content-wise. Among other things, husbands and wives were not allowed to sleep in the same bed. It's implied that members of the opposite gender who weren't married couldn't either. Then the ratings system was introduced, and people could put things that weren't okay for a five-year old to see in their movies because everyone was warned beforehand.
Videogames did the same thing, pre-ESRB. Nintendo was incredibly strict as to what was acceptable content in their games (they still are, to a lesser extent.) Sega did their own ratings system, so they allowed a lot more through. Then Mortal Kombat happened, which caused the ESRB, and now we have the situation we have now, with Lieberman bitching all the way. Reguardless of how asinine it might be sometimes, the ratings system is still a necessary (and helpful) thing.
Exactly. I remember hearing somewhere that kids surveyed said that they were affected more by the news reports of real-life violence (ie the war in Iraq, 9-11) than they were by fictional violenct. Why? BECAUSE MOST KIDS AREN'T DUMBASSES. THEY KNOW THAT THE VIOLENCE IN MOVIES AND VIDEO GAMES ISN'T REAL.
Exactly. These are company policies, not federal or state laws, at the moment. These companies are simply bending to the will of the whiny parents who are blaming all of society's ills on violent media.
Personally, I want to see Square port some of their SNES games to the GBA. There wouldn't be problems with slowdowns like with the PSX ports (since that was mostly due to load times.) Portable Chrono Trigger? Hell yeah.
(Here's a mirror of the GIA, for those of you who care: http://terror.snm-hgkz.ch/mirrors/www.thegia.com/ )
Exactly. Linux won't be a viable alternative for most people until people come out with a distro that's as idiot-proof and easy to use as Windows or OS X. This means, among other things, making it so that you would never have to use the command line. Being able to use all of their Windows software on Linux wouldn't hurt either (and I know they're working on that.)
Interesting. I always thought of Nintendo as the Apple of the console industry ever since they released that line of N64s that came in iMac colors.
Exactly. I can't imagine playing Starcraft without a mouse (Starcraft 64), and I also can't imagine playing the PC version of Metal Gear Solid 2 on a keyboard (or on anything other than my Playstation controller hooked up to a USB adaptor, for that matter.) You can't imagine playing any games with a controller because the only games you've played are designed around a keyboard/mouse combo.
Sony has already released a broadband adaptor and will release a hard drive (not compatible with the PS2 linux one) for their system, though I doubt the'll sell well to anyone who doesn't want to play Final Fantasy XI. I can most definetly see Sony including a broadband adaptor and a hard drive with the PS3, though, seeing as the XBox has shown what you can do with them.
After price drop: ~$350, which is only 12% lower.
And that's exactly why they would drop the price. Whatever money they may lose by dropping the price will be regained over time through software royalties, so it's no big deal if they drop the price now. I'm not sure if they'd drop it down to $99, but they will most probably drop the price for the holidays.
This was actually a change. In the Japanese version, they were named after condiments (Soy Sauce, Vinegar, and Mayonaise(sp?), if I recall correctly.) This became a problem when the sequel came out and one of the 40-some playable characters' names was Slash, which they had to change to Nikki in the US version to avoid confusion.
Thunderbird is a different story; however, Thunderbird is still at 0.2. I use it for my mail, but I don't do much with my mail aside from getting it and reading it and occasionally writing a letter. People who do fancy things with filters and stuff may not like it as much, but it suits my needs just fine.
You could probably score a fair amount of money by buying a bunch of these bundles and reselling the systems and the games separatley- sell the GC for a little below the street price and make up for it by selling the collection disk, which will probably go for a good amount, separatley.
That would be sweet-ass, though, if they did put that in there too.
Ah... hate to break it to you buddy, but they didn't do much to the FF re-releases. Well, they updated the FF1&2 re-relases graphically, but they took those graphics from the Wonderswan Color port they made. The PSX versions of FF4-6 and Chrono Trigger are basically the same games running on top of a shitty SNES emulator.
That would be kinda dumb, seeing as they put it on their list of the most OVERRATED games a couple of weeks ago. :)
So was what I said, so that makes us even or something. Sorry for causing any undue confusion, just my lame attempt at trying to get modded up as funny. :)
Looking at Newell's statement, I guess they've known that someone was going to pull something like this since the 19th (when they discovered that someone copied the source code,) so it probably was the leak that caused the delay.
That's because for some reason all the code of HL1 is in there (my guess is they just had it all there for convinience so they could easily deal with any HL1 code they needed to use) and HL1 was based off of the Quake 1 engine (which was made by ID).
Alright, I'm a lowly CS freshman, but I KNOW that that isn't valid C++ code.
If it was delayed today, I'd agree, but it was delayed days before; however, I wouldn't be surprised if it was delayed further so they can alter the code enought to render any cheats that could be made with this useless. At the very least, they're probably glad they delayed it now.
Nintendo won't die over here. They still have a monopoly on portable systems (for now, at least, Sony could change that, we'll have to see,) and there are enough people who want to play Metroid and Zelda and Mario that they'll still be able to make a good profit here; however, I can see them being the Apple of the console market here.
You could say the same about other series, too. Blizzard hasn't made any really revolutionary RTS game since they practically invented the genre with Warcraft 1, but in subsequent games (WC2, Starcraft, WC3) they have attempted to improve the formula. Does a game have to be something "new" and "different" to be good?
You'll see that the bosses have a stun gague now, so I would think that means that the M9 (or some other tranquilizer gun) would be there.