Japan uses NTSC. Microsoft isn't completely clueless...
Okay. Maybe a little clueless. I have to question the sanity of any company that thinks that it's a good idea to take games that I wouldn't get in my native language and try to sell them to someone who isn't as familiar with the language.
Especially Conker. Conker is an okay game, but the reason why most people I know who played it decided to play it was because of the flavor and humor (not my style of humor, but hey). If the language barrier interfere's with that, why are they bothering to even release it?
They probably shouldn't have to. I'd imagine a good portion of Japanese can read English (or that's what it'd seem at least). Logos always seem to be in English and most games from Japan have English in them. The majority of imports I've gotten have had English portions or at least provided support for English.
I rarely worry about importing anymore. For the Biohazard remake (Resident Evil here), all of the voices in the game were done in English. For a game being released in Japan by a Japanese company to have English be the default language in the game says that English is probably fairly common over there.
The rules for Quidditch are also noted in the books for being insane. Matches were known for going on for days with substitutions being made to allow players to get some sleep.
Since games are usually balanced in the player's favor, particularly sports games, I'd imagine they'd just make the golden snitch catchable a lot more easily and that would allow the player to progress. If they'd want to balance it, all they'd have to do is take out the 150 point sweep which balances because the leader is expending resources on catching the snitch while the other team is working to catch up.
Here's why that doesn't work. You get the gamecube. You then make copies of a few games, say Super Monkey Ball 2 and Resident Evil. Then you go out and buy Super Mario Sunshine.
So now Nintendo has profitted by your generosity. Except Sega (Super Monkey Ball 2) and Capcom (Resident Evil) have spent money on development, production of the games, and yet get absolutely no benefit from your pirating ways since you were buying another companies games.
Are you an organized pirate that considers what companies you're stealing from and which ones you want to support? How about when dealing with a company like Sega which is a bunch of design teams that work very seperately (Sonic Team, Amusement Visions, Smilebit)?
It's nice to say that you want to support companies sometimes and I'm probably one of the last people that should condemn those activities, but the fact of the matter is, when I tell people I have a modchip in my PS2 and Xbox, they immediately say, "Cool. You don't have to pay for games." My Xbox library of purchased games is very substantial and my Xbox's modchip is almost entirely for Xbox Media Player purposes, but very few people stick to the honor system.
Just because you can't afford something doesn't mean you're entitled to it anyway. We've all been there.
If you take a picture of a painting from outside the gift shop, you are going to get something slightly less than what the actual painting is. You'll get glare off of the window. Possibly cropping issues unless your hands are steady as a rock. In every way when you do something like that (which seems wacky in the first place), you get an inferior product. The product is particularly inferior in the manner in which it's to be used, specifically for viewing purposes.
In the case of copying a game, you get something that is a perfect copy of the game save for the box and label on the disc. In the case of the game, the focus of the game isn't on the box or the labelling (hopefully), but should be on the content of the game which isn't changed at all by the copying process (debatable with burned game playing bootups, but still holds).
By making a copy of a game, you benefit perfectly from the product without giving those who put the effort into making it any consideration. That's why it's not good.
That's because the controller is designed to be used for a Gamecube. It has all of the same buttons as the Gamecube has with the 4 on the front, the two shoulders, and the additional shoulder button (Z) finding itself added onto the front.
Is that a French translation program you were using? *ahem*
In case you didn't notice, the UK gets an absurdly low amount of translations/games. AC, while an excellent game, still didn't outsell most of the major Nintendo titles. So then the mindset goes:
"Hmmmm... do we translate Pokemon, which we've already got translated and doesn't even need to be adjusted for a different video standard so it'll cost us nothing other than promotional material/boxes/etc. Or do we translate a game that is so based on the culture of where it's released that we'd have to change entire events."
We aren't talking about just colors or flags or anything like that. If I'm not mistaken, Columbus Day (Explorer's Day) and Independence Day (not sure) are in Animal Crossing and should have no significance in Europe. So, do they take out those days meanings? What do they put in their place? There are other things that just don't work right with the renaturalization.
There are plenty of things that would have to be localized for Europe and with the exception of a few games (Silent Hill 3, Shenemue 2) Europe usually gets the ignored treatment anyway.
AC is not an easily translatable game. To complain that Nintendo isn't translating a "sleeper" but great game, is an exercise in futility.
Just because something is remade doesn't mean that it has to taint the memory of the original. I can think of two remakes that felt like the originals off the top of my head: Resident Evil for Gamecube and Dragon's Lair 3D for all platforms.
RE was almost exactly the original with all sorts of little extra things and boosted graphics.
Dragon's Lair was very similar too. Considering the source material, it was very good and it felt very familiar too. It was just dying over and over and over and over and over again. Ah memories of both Dragon's Lairs.
It's a portable phone/game system that's planning on competing with Nintendo and eventually Sony. At E3, the N-Gage reps quoted the price of the N-Gage at being well over the price of any of the current generation systems.
Nokia is ignoring so many mistakes of the video game industry that they're not expected to be in very good shape.
People don't want their portable to be expensive because they're delicate and not generally as used as a console system (the screen is small). The reason why nobody bought a Turbo Graphix Express despite it already having a console-worthy library was because it cost so much.
Then there's the fact that they're releasing it against the rumors of Sony's portable. Anyone hearing "Dreamcast" here? The Dreamcast was destroyed almost entirely by the anticipation of the PS2. Everyone you asked was "No. I'll wait for the PS2. That can play PSX games/play DVD movies." Sony has such a big name that going up against them is insane without either bags and bags of money (Microsoft) or a current and loyal following already (Nintendo).
To push the N-Gage on gamers they'd have to be selling it for far less money than the other systems. But they're taking the opposite approach. I seem to remember reading it as you could get 2 Xboxen, 2 PS2s or 2 Gamecubes and a game for their price. That seems a little backwards.
Maybe they'll make out alright. But I wouldn't bet on them.
The reason why pinball games are steadily getting rarer and rarer (and thus more expensive) are numerous.
First, it's because they so rarely get made any more. South Park and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace are the last two made in recent years that I know of and considering Phantom Menace is now several years old, pinball machines are getting made at the rate of "one every few years" (sorry, too lazy to look up when Phantom Menace was released).
The other, and more significant reason is that pinball repair is a somewhat dead art. With the number of machines decreasing, there's less demand for repair on them and thus less people learning how to fix them. These aren't simply "replace the board" type fixes either. They involve all sorts of proprietary parts that may or may not be available any longer.
Overall, not a good position for pinball, even if it's possibly the most universally fun timewasting device in an arcade.
Really. If you wanted to see this editorial it probably would've been just as easy to go to one of the Gamecube boards on gamefaqs (www.gamefaqs.com). Then just look for a "Nintendo sucks" topic and you're all set. The only thing that makes this significant is because this is an editorial on Nintendojo which has always been a fairly decent source for Nintendo news.
I won't even bother picking apart the article. That's already been done before and with he proves a point with his confused ramblings. To paraphrase Fry from Futurama, "People don't want innovative. They want the same thing over and over and over." Look at Nintendo's lineup.
Mario Sunshine, Super Smash Bros Melee, Zelda: Wind Waker, and Luigi's Mansion have been the high selling games for the system. While each has innovation on its own, they each have flaws and ultimately are updates (though possibly big ones) to earlier games (except Luigi which is just too short). Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Eternal Darkness, the games with the unusual and innovative twists simply don't sell well.
It's a shame, but that's how things are. The person who wrote that editorial is clearly cranky and clueless (which Xbox title is the innovative one? was it the generic FPS Halo or the non-generic but barely a game DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball?), but everyone is entitled to an opinion.
You could run from enemies in Skies of Arcadia. It just hurt your ranking (you gain ranks based on certain choices you make). The problem was with the DC version, the load times were so long that it took less time to just kill the monsters than to run away. The Gamecube has much speedier load times.
They also fixed things slightly on the atrocious amount of monster encounters for the GC version (though there are still a/lot/ of monsters). The encounters have been lessened and the experience handed out has been improved.
Since when did "system which has yet to be profitable" qualify as ruling. Nintendo isn't Sega. The difference is that Nintendo has yet to have an unprofitable system (Virtual Boy excluded). No, they aren't likely to become #1 again soon (ever?), but they'll be in the hardware business a long time from now.
Has anyone noticed how many systems are being released way over the current price point? N-Gage and the phantom console are both jumping into a market where both companies are complete unknowns and both at a price point twice (or more) of all other contenders.
You have to be curious why someone would jump into a market (especially the video game market which has companies good at what they do (read: Sega)) forcing themselves into bad situations.
Are they just ignoring the facts? Or do they know something we don't?
"My Xbox games from launch look better than even the newest games on my PS2 and Gamecube."
Aside from Halo, which games are these? Shrek, Fusion Frenzy, or Oddworld. (I disagree about Halo, but every time I discuss the Xbox with an Xbox fan, they rave about it) Seriously, the only other game I can imagine you talking about here is DOA and that's one game in a pack of awful.
This is going to be an interesting system to look at. The big reason is that like most people I know, I use my portable systems almost entirely at home. As I've heard it mentioned before, a portable system is mostly just a good excuse to play the older crop of games. Top down RPGs. 16bit-esque adventures. It's stuff that doesn't get released on current consoles.
It'll be interesting to see if Sony picks up on this and just rereleases their killer library from the PSX. Too bad we don't know a lot about this thing yet.
The other important thing to recognize here is the fact that most wargaming is done at a central location. Most people, when they do miniature wargaming, are doing so at a "gaming store", a place where there are:
1) other people to play with 2) terrain usable for setting up a battlefield 3) someone with at least a mild interest enough in the game to act as a valid referee/rules clarifier
Internet sites don't really have to provide that and don't have to pay the rent (webspace is nothing compared to that) and so can undercut the people who are generally/teaching/ the game to the people who will eventually be playing (read: buying) the game.
It shouldn't really be a suprise that GW did this. They've been putting rules on buying from them for a while and as has been mentioned in previous posts, if they screw up either the order or the merchandise, refunds are next to impossible. Thankfully, I never played the GW games specifically, but I've played enough miniatures games to hear the horror stories from retailers and gamers.
Is it me, or after looking at the findings (the one on the Open Source Developers) did anyone have their stereotypes confirmed?
Each item on the list could be considered geekish or could be incorporated into some amount of geekishness. And just using the words "Open Source" makes me wonder how anyone could think that the findings went contrary to expectations.
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Japan uses NTSC. Microsoft isn't completely clueless...
Okay. Maybe a little clueless. I have to question the sanity of any company that thinks that it's a good idea to take games that I wouldn't get in my native language and try to sell them to someone who isn't as familiar with the language.
Especially Conker. Conker is an okay game, but the reason why most people I know who played it decided to play it was because of the flavor and humor (not my style of humor, but hey). If the language barrier interfere's with that, why are they bothering to even release it?
They probably shouldn't have to. I'd imagine a good portion of Japanese can read English (or that's what it'd seem at least). Logos always seem to be in English and most games from Japan have English in them. The majority of imports I've gotten have had English portions or at least provided support for English.
I rarely worry about importing anymore. For the Biohazard remake (Resident Evil here), all of the voices in the game were done in English. For a game being released in Japan by a Japanese company to have English be the default language in the game says that English is probably fairly common over there.
The rules for Quidditch are also noted in the books for being insane. Matches were known for going on for days with substitutions being made to allow players to get some sleep.
Since games are usually balanced in the player's favor, particularly sports games, I'd imagine they'd just make the golden snitch catchable a lot more easily and that would allow the player to progress. If they'd want to balance it, all they'd have to do is take out the 150 point sweep which balances because the leader is expending resources on catching the snitch while the other team is working to catch up.
Here's why that doesn't work. You get the gamecube. You then make copies of a few games, say Super Monkey Ball 2 and Resident Evil. Then you go out and buy Super Mario Sunshine.
So now Nintendo has profitted by your generosity. Except Sega (Super Monkey Ball 2) and Capcom (Resident Evil) have spent money on development, production of the games, and yet get absolutely no benefit from your pirating ways since you were buying another companies games.
Are you an organized pirate that considers what companies you're stealing from and which ones you want to support? How about when dealing with a company like Sega which is a bunch of design teams that work very seperately (Sonic Team, Amusement Visions, Smilebit)?
It's nice to say that you want to support companies sometimes and I'm probably one of the last people that should condemn those activities, but the fact of the matter is, when I tell people I have a modchip in my PS2 and Xbox, they immediately say, "Cool. You don't have to pay for games." My Xbox library of purchased games is very substantial and my Xbox's modchip is almost entirely for Xbox Media Player purposes, but very few people stick to the honor system.
Just because you can't afford something doesn't mean you're entitled to it anyway. We've all been there.
Slightly incorrect.
If you take a picture of a painting from outside the gift shop, you are going to get something slightly less than what the actual painting is. You'll get glare off of the window. Possibly cropping issues unless your hands are steady as a rock. In every way when you do something like that (which seems wacky in the first place), you get an inferior product. The product is particularly inferior in the manner in which it's to be used, specifically for viewing purposes.
In the case of copying a game, you get something that is a perfect copy of the game save for the box and label on the disc. In the case of the game, the focus of the game isn't on the box or the labelling (hopefully), but should be on the content of the game which isn't changed at all by the copying process (debatable with burned game playing bootups, but still holds).
By making a copy of a game, you benefit perfectly from the product without giving those who put the effort into making it any consideration. That's why it's not good.
Nintendo seems to be giving into the black trend. I imported my GBA player, so my current system looks as follows:
Gamecube System - Indigo
Broadband Adapter - Black
GBA Player - Spice (orange)
My GBA's are Cobalt Blue (SP) and Milky Pink (original).
Embrace the mismatch.
That's because the controller is designed to be used for a Gamecube. It has all of the same buttons as the Gamecube has with the 4 on the front, the two shoulders, and the additional shoulder button (Z) finding itself added onto the front.
Is that a French translation program you were using? *ahem*
In case you didn't notice, the UK gets an absurdly low amount of translations/games. AC, while an excellent game, still didn't outsell most of the major Nintendo titles. So then the mindset goes:
"Hmmmm... do we translate Pokemon, which we've already got translated and doesn't even need to be adjusted for a different video standard so it'll cost us nothing other than promotional material/boxes/etc. Or do we translate a game that is so based on the culture of where it's released that we'd have to change entire events."
We aren't talking about just colors or flags or anything like that. If I'm not mistaken, Columbus Day (Explorer's Day) and Independence Day (not sure) are in Animal Crossing and should have no significance in Europe. So, do they take out those days meanings? What do they put in their place? There are other things that just don't work right with the renaturalization.
There are plenty of things that would have to be localized for Europe and with the exception of a few games (Silent Hill 3, Shenemue 2) Europe usually gets the ignored treatment anyway.
AC is not an easily translatable game. To complain that Nintendo isn't translating a "sleeper" but great game, is an exercise in futility.
Just because something is remade doesn't mean that it has to taint the memory of the original. I can think of two remakes that felt like the originals off the top of my head: Resident Evil for Gamecube and Dragon's Lair 3D for all platforms.
RE was almost exactly the original with all sorts of little extra things and boosted graphics.
Dragon's Lair was very similar too. Considering the source material, it was very good and it felt very familiar too. It was just dying over and over and over and over and over again. Ah memories of both Dragon's Lairs.
"Our advertising ranges from the subliminal to the liminal to the superliminal."
"Superliminal?"
"Hey you! Join the Navy!"
"Okay"
Does anyone else see similarities between Lt. L.T. Smash's advertising tactics and Nokia's.
"Hey you! Don't buy Gameboy. It's uncool."
"Okay."
"Hey you! Buy N-Gage. It's cool."
"Okay."
It's so simple it's genious. They'll make bags of money.
It's a portable phone/game system that's planning on competing with Nintendo and eventually Sony. At E3, the N-Gage reps quoted the price of the N-Gage at being well over the price of any of the current generation systems.
Nokia is ignoring so many mistakes of the video game industry that they're not expected to be in very good shape.
People don't want their portable to be expensive because they're delicate and not generally as used as a console system (the screen is small). The reason why nobody bought a Turbo Graphix Express despite it already having a console-worthy library was because it cost so much.
Then there's the fact that they're releasing it against the rumors of Sony's portable. Anyone hearing "Dreamcast" here? The Dreamcast was destroyed almost entirely by the anticipation of the PS2. Everyone you asked was "No. I'll wait for the PS2. That can play PSX games/play DVD movies." Sony has such a big name that going up against them is insane without either bags and bags of money (Microsoft) or a current and loyal following already (Nintendo).
To push the N-Gage on gamers they'd have to be selling it for far less money than the other systems. But they're taking the opposite approach. I seem to remember reading it as you could get 2 Xboxen, 2 PS2s or 2 Gamecubes and a game for their price. That seems a little backwards.
Maybe they'll make out alright. But I wouldn't bet on them.
And then he N-Gage is going to
The reason why pinball games are steadily getting rarer and rarer (and thus more expensive) are numerous.
First, it's because they so rarely get made any more. South Park and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace are the last two made in recent years that I know of and considering Phantom Menace is now several years old, pinball machines are getting made at the rate of "one every few years" (sorry, too lazy to look up when Phantom Menace was released).
The other, and more significant reason is that pinball repair is a somewhat dead art. With the number of machines decreasing, there's less demand for repair on them and thus less people learning how to fix them. These aren't simply "replace the board" type fixes either. They involve all sorts of proprietary parts that may or may not be available any longer.
Overall, not a good position for pinball, even if it's possibly the most universally fun timewasting device in an arcade.
That and I'd imagine that those 80 gram adapters get lost fairly easily.
Really. If you wanted to see this editorial it probably would've been just as easy to go to one of the Gamecube boards on gamefaqs (www.gamefaqs.com). Then just look for a "Nintendo sucks" topic and you're all set. The only thing that makes this significant is because this is an editorial on Nintendojo which has always been a fairly decent source for Nintendo news.
I won't even bother picking apart the article. That's already been done before and with he proves a point with his confused ramblings. To paraphrase Fry from Futurama, "People don't want innovative. They want the same thing over and over and over." Look at Nintendo's lineup.
Mario Sunshine, Super Smash Bros Melee, Zelda: Wind Waker, and Luigi's Mansion have been the high selling games for the system. While each has innovation on its own, they each have flaws and ultimately are updates (though possibly big ones) to earlier games (except Luigi which is just too short). Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Eternal Darkness, the games with the unusual and innovative twists simply don't sell well.
It's a shame, but that's how things are. The person who wrote that editorial is clearly cranky and clueless (which Xbox title is the innovative one? was it the generic FPS Halo or the non-generic but barely a game DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball?), but everyone is entitled to an opinion.
You could run from enemies in Skies of Arcadia. It just hurt your ranking (you gain ranks based on certain choices you make). The problem was with the DC version, the load times were so long that it took less time to just kill the monsters than to run away. The Gamecube has much speedier load times.
/lot/ of monsters). The encounters have been lessened and the experience handed out has been improved.
They also fixed things slightly on the atrocious amount of monster encounters for the GC version (though there are still a
"I loved EP I, can't get enough of EP II"
So you're saying you're a masochist?
In a gaming world ruled by Sony and Microsoft?
Since when did "system which has yet to be profitable" qualify as ruling. Nintendo isn't Sega. The difference is that Nintendo has yet to have an unprofitable system (Virtual Boy excluded). No, they aren't likely to become #1 again soon (ever?), but they'll be in the hardware business a long time from now.
isn't the reason why MvC2 for Xbox didn't get an online portion, that Activision has all rights to Marvel video games?
It'd be cool, but it sounds really doubtful.
Has anyone noticed how many systems are being released way over the current price point? N-Gage and the phantom console are both jumping into a market where both companies are complete unknowns and both at a price point twice (or more) of all other contenders.
You have to be curious why someone would jump into a market (especially the video game market which has companies good at what they do (read: Sega)) forcing themselves into bad situations.
Are they just ignoring the facts? Or do they know something we don't?
"My Xbox games from launch look better than even the newest games on my PS2 and Gamecube."
Aside from Halo, which games are these? Shrek, Fusion Frenzy, or Oddworld. (I disagree about Halo, but every time I discuss the Xbox with an Xbox fan, they rave about it) Seriously, the only other game I can imagine you talking about here is DOA and that's one game in a pack of awful.
It's already released in Japan and I think there's been a US release date for a while. So yes, it's being released.
This is going to be an interesting system to look at. The big reason is that like most people I know, I use my portable systems almost entirely at home. As I've heard it mentioned before, a portable system is mostly just a good excuse to play the older crop of games. Top down RPGs. 16bit-esque adventures. It's stuff that doesn't get released on current consoles.
It'll be interesting to see if Sony picks up on this and just rereleases their killer library from the PSX. Too bad we don't know a lot about this thing yet.
The other important thing to recognize here is the fact that most wargaming is done at a central location. Most people, when they do miniature wargaming, are doing so at a "gaming store", a place where there are:
/teaching/ the game to the people who will eventually be playing (read: buying) the game.
1) other people to play with
2) terrain usable for setting up a battlefield
3) someone with at least a mild interest enough in the game to act as a valid referee/rules clarifier
Internet sites don't really have to provide that and don't have to pay the rent (webspace is nothing compared to that) and so can undercut the people who are generally
It shouldn't really be a suprise that GW did this. They've been putting rules on buying from them for a while and as has been mentioned in previous posts, if they screw up either the order or the merchandise, refunds are next to impossible. Thankfully, I never played the GW games specifically, but I've played enough miniatures games to hear the horror stories from retailers and gamers.
Is it me, or after looking at the findings (the one on the Open Source Developers) did anyone have their stereotypes confirmed?
Each item on the list could be considered geekish or could be incorporated into some amount of geekishness. And just using the words "Open Source" makes me wonder how anyone could think that the findings went contrary to expectations.
.... the blue screen of death, we can get the flashing blue screen of death. How convenient. :)