Frankly, I don't think that's a particularly paranoid concept to begin with.
Space on retailers shelves, and similar representation at the retail level, is a commodity that has always been hotly contested. I'm not just talking about video games, but retail in general.
Special agreements to get preferential treatment are fairly common.
Add to this the fact that Microsoft's behavior in regards to the X-Box seems to be "Don't worry about the price, we feel we must buy our way into this industry," I would think it goes without saying that MS would have some form of preferential agreement with retailers...
While I don't have a PDA myself, I've always wondered about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of merging phone and PDA.
Both tend to be used for storing contact information, I can see that as an argument on the pro side.
However, if I were using a PDA for scheduling or note taking purposes, I would think that it would be a fairly common situation to be on the phone while needing to access that functionality...
A phone that's good at being a phone, a PDA that's good at being a PDA, and a well thought out scheme of data sharing between the two(as far as contact information goes, unless you want something fancy like PDA programming alarms into your phone based on your calendar...) That seems like a better solution to me.
A cell phone/PDA seems like a chisel/hammer to me... Limited because it can't be both at once.
Funny, I always thought Gungrave came pretty damn close to being Hellsing the PS2 game. Undead protagonist with oversized guns. Check. The character designs were by the creator of Trigun, and since, at least imo, it was rather obvious that Hirano, the creator of Hellsing, was rather influenced by the Trigun character designs...
In response to the grandparent thread: Halo the movie might be nice, but what we need is Marthon the mini series... No way a movie could capture it, only work well in a longer format.
ATI has improved, but I've seen plenty of complaints and problems with the ATI card + OpenGL based game equation.
Their drivers support for OpenGL has some interesting issues(in one game, for example, there's a known issue that the latest 'official' revision of the ATI drivers causes intermittent crashes... and there are still some peculiar problems with some of the other driver versions as well).
For DirectX Direct3D support, ATI has improved leaps and bounds. However, they still have some major issues with their OpenGL support.
They don't have a good history when it comes to drivers, and they still have some problems(like OpenGL support). Good hardware, but people should do the research and be aware of the current limitations and history of problems.
Metroid Prime is an interesting case... I agree that the entire method of storytelling(discovering scattered details that you have to put together from the brief text dumps) was a very different take than what you normally see(cut scenes and voice overs).
It's similar(though much simpler) than the way the plot in the Marathon series unfolded(where the entire plot was found by way of computer terminals that you read throughout the games... somtimes messages to your character, sometimes other stuff...)
Unfortunately, Phantasy Star series is a console RPG that is not made by Squaresoft. Thus, it is automatically relegated to being a second class citizen so to speak...
(Frankly, I agree with you completely... Phantasy Star 2 is one of my all time favorite games, definitely top ten, maybe top five... However, there's a strong trend for console RPG's to get less credit then they deserve, or outright ignored, if they don't come from Square... Sad, but true.)
Actually, Bungie publishing on PC's is a relatively recent trend. Only Marathon game that made it to PC was 2. Everything after the Marathon games made it I believe though. However, that leaves Marathon, Marathon Infinity, Pathways Into Darkness(Which did actually happen in the same 'universe' as Marathon, only on Earth and a lot earlier in time...), Minotaur... maybe one or two I'm forgetting.
As far as Halo/Marathon connections... while there are plenty of hints(the frequently found but obscured Marathon symbols in Halo, combat cyborgs that have a tie to the word Mjolnir, AI constructs of questionable allegiance), there are a lot of ways the timelines just don't coincide. *heh* For one thing, the humans have some form of FTL travel in the Halo universe, and tecnically Halo should occur before Marathon based upon what dates have been mentioned in both. However, post Marathon 2(I believe... might have been post Marathon 1), Durandal is stated to have taught humans their first method of FTL travel.
That said, beyond the simple thematic similarities, there are the 'Cortana e-mails' which could be used as evidence for a Halo occurs in the Marathon/Pathways universe. Back when Halo was still a 'PC/Mac title,' and before the entire X-Box thing, there were some e-mails from a supposed 'Cortana' to the guy who runs the Marathon Story page. Aside from being a cute publicity stunt, everything in them pointed to ties to Marathon...
Fitting Halo into the Marathon/Pathways universe might be intended, but with what we've seen so far, it won't be easy and have a lot of continuity issues...
Well, knowing Marathon, from your description I'm not certain there's much similarity to Portal, outside of the fact that both stories center on a single AI character communicating with the character as the medium for the story...
Marathon was, at surface level, a fairly standard action in a SF setting plot. Aliens attack a colony ship, you(with guidance by the ships AI) help fight off the attackers. The story was well put together for the time(instead of a single page of text before the game and at the end and nothing in the middle, you get multiple updates per level), but if you didn't try and dig deeper and just accepted it at face value, it was a well done for the time but nothing fancy(particularly by totdays standards) story.
The trick is, if you try to analyze what the various terminals in Marathon say, and answer some unanswered questions you realize that there was a lot more going on than just the surface level story implies. Unless you've played the game, and gone to the previously linked Marathon Story page, it's hard to convey just how significant this 'hidden story' aspect is. Just about every terminal in the game has some hidden meaning in it... and there are a lot of terminals. The one sad thing is, the terminal driven plot really helped facilitate this 'story by misdirection,' and I'm not certain the same impressive web could be achieved with cut scenes, voice overs and the like...
If you can survive on 12k in the Detroit area, then I'd have to say Detroit is on the low cost side of things relative to other locations. Now, admittedly, I'm used to dealing with Boston(the Boston area, nowhere near downtown actually) which from most recent studies(as I recall) is the single most expensive locale to live in the country. You'll spend nearly 12k a year on housing alone in this area.
You do make some good points, but I think you miss one major issue. Cost of living varies tremendously based on location. Even taking the base assumption of 'In the US,' there can be a huge difference in expenses based on location. $35k / year in South Carolina and you can definitely live comfortably, you won't be able to spend exorbitantly, but you can live in a decent neighborhood, shouldn't ever need to worry about making ends meet, and should have a healthy bit of surplus income to spend on the nicer things. $35k / year in the Boston area on the other hand, you'll have to take whatever housing options you can manage to afford, and you won't have the 'comfort margin' that allows you to not worry about paying bills and provides you with plenty of spending cash that the 35k in SC would.
That said, the point on OSHA regulations is a real good one, and it is true that many(probably most) salaried employees have an income that should be sufficient for their location. I'm just think that there's not really a single 'flat minimum sufficient income' since cost of living is so location dependent.
Actually, as far as HAL goes, if I recall correctly, the reason for HAL going insane had nothing to do with becoming self aware, but was because lying and witholding information were against the 'nature' of hs programming, and he was instructed to lie/withold information(regarding the sighting of a monolith near Jupiter) from the crew...
Zelda wasn't exactly the example I was thinking of. I was thinking of games similar to the Mana series from Squaresoft(including Secret of Mana, and the earlier gameboy game that was relabeled 'Final Fantasy Adventure' for the US release). I'm pretty certain the Mana series predates Diablo, and your stats do determine accuracy in those games, as opposed to the Zelda games where players twitch skill plays a mutch larger role.
Admittedly, this still leaves Diablo as the first action RPG that is heavier on the RPG side of the scale and uses randomly generated levels...
Depends, do you count the original Japanese release, or the non-Japanese release which took part long afterwards... The original release was from all accounts I've heard of, typical for a MMORPG, or in other words bug ridden. Only reason it seemed smooth in the US(and other locales), was that they joined quite awhile after the actual launch, in fact the first expansion was already released and patched up before the worldwide release...
Considering the original Pirates! had the open ended gaming, missions present if you decide to do them sort of style long before even the first GTA, I think it would be more appropriate to say that GTA has a Pirates! style feel to it...
Funny, I thought FFX was actually a good example of 'let's stick to the current trends' rather than some major departure from the norm.
While not true of all recent games, there has been a trend to less gameplay, more cut scenes. I'd argue that Square has been one of the companies leading that trend, and that FFX was just a simple case of following that formula.
Then again, I must admit I'm not the biggest fan of Square... They make good games, but I really think they are by far the most over rated developers in the business.
While motion sensors could definitely work, they border on overkill for this. Simply leave a readily accessible switch in each room, and let people turn it on manually. If you want to get fancy, having a simple 'music is available' light next to the switch for powering the speakers might be nice. (Probably be easy to rig up by modifying one of those light switch's with the dummy light that are used for attic lights and the like).
Well, I don't think I whine about how Halo came out, but I must say I am disapointed with it. Mostly this comes from being a Bungie fan for quite a long while.
I liked Halo, but it didn't blow me away the way Marathon did. Bungie was, at least at one point in time, capable of doing a lot better. I was expecting a lot more in terms of story, level design, story, length of single player campaign, and story(Yes, story really was that integral to Marathon...).
Er... You do realize that of this console generation, only the XBox has more texture memory than the Gamecube? Both the PS2 and the Dreamcast had less... I may be fuzzy on the Dreamcast, but I know for certain the PS2 has the absolute least memory for textures.
A hard drive has been present for ages in computer gaming, and it doesn't bring about many 'innovations.' The ability to add content/patch the application post-release(generally a good ability, but then again the ability to patch applications is arguably part of the reason PC games have a penchant for shipping buggy), the ability to have huge save game states, the ability to use hard disk as swap space that is faster than removable media, but not at RAM speed. That's really all the hard disk brings to the table.
Also, there's an even more cynical take on the hard drive. It wasn't there for any form of innovation at all, but is there because Microsoft was trying to build a console to leverage the existing computer game industry to build a game library of shovelware ports of PC games.
As far as the expense of the hard drive, there is also the failure rate of hard drives to take into account...
Well, to nitpick this offtopic thread just a little more...
In Japan, there were three distinct animated incarnations of Kenshin. A TV series which(mostly) covered the original comics storyline. A movie which was set after the TV show, and had an original non-comic based story. Finally, there was a direct to video release that was the back story of the main character.
Things get odd when licensing for the US release comes into play. The three animated incarnations of Kenshin got split up between two(maybe three, but I think it's two) companies. One of the companies involved retitles the portion they have the rights for US release as "Samurai X," the other portions are released under the Rurouni Kenshin moniker.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, I don't think that's a particularly paranoid concept to begin with. Space on retailers shelves, and similar representation at the retail level, is a commodity that has always been hotly contested. I'm not just talking about video games, but retail in general. Special agreements to get preferential treatment are fairly common. Add to this the fact that Microsoft's behavior in regards to the X-Box seems to be "Don't worry about the price, we feel we must buy our way into this industry," I would think it goes without saying that MS would have some form of preferential agreement with retailers...
While I don't have a PDA myself, I've always wondered about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of merging phone and PDA. Both tend to be used for storing contact information, I can see that as an argument on the pro side. However, if I were using a PDA for scheduling or note taking purposes, I would think that it would be a fairly common situation to be on the phone while needing to access that functionality... A phone that's good at being a phone, a PDA that's good at being a PDA, and a well thought out scheme of data sharing between the two(as far as contact information goes, unless you want something fancy like PDA programming alarms into your phone based on your calendar...) That seems like a better solution to me. A cell phone/PDA seems like a chisel/hammer to me... Limited because it can't be both at once.
Funny, I always thought Gungrave came pretty damn close to being Hellsing the PS2 game. Undead protagonist with oversized guns. Check. The character designs were by the creator of Trigun, and since, at least imo, it was rather obvious that Hirano, the creator of Hellsing, was rather influenced by the Trigun character designs... In response to the grandparent thread: Halo the movie might be nice, but what we need is Marthon the mini series... No way a movie could capture it, only work well in a longer format.
ATI has improved, but I've seen plenty of complaints and problems with the ATI card + OpenGL based game equation.
Their drivers support for OpenGL has some interesting issues(in one game, for example, there's a known issue that the latest 'official' revision of the ATI drivers causes intermittent crashes... and there are still some peculiar problems with some of the other driver versions as well).
For DirectX Direct3D support, ATI has improved leaps and bounds. However, they still have some major issues with their OpenGL support.
They don't have a good history when it comes to drivers, and they still have some problems(like OpenGL support). Good hardware, but people should do the research and be aware of the current limitations and history of problems.
Metroid Prime is an interesting case... I agree that the entire method of storytelling(discovering scattered details that you have to put together from the brief text dumps) was a very different take than what you normally see(cut scenes and voice overs).
It's similar(though much simpler) than the way the plot in the Marathon series unfolded(where the entire plot was found by way of computer terminals that you read throughout the games... somtimes messages to your character, sometimes other stuff...)
Unfortunately, Phantasy Star series is a console RPG that is not made by Squaresoft. Thus, it is automatically relegated to being a second class citizen so to speak... (Frankly, I agree with you completely... Phantasy Star 2 is one of my all time favorite games, definitely top ten, maybe top five... However, there's a strong trend for console RPG's to get less credit then they deserve, or outright ignored, if they don't come from Square... Sad, but true.)
Actually, Bungie publishing on PC's is a relatively recent trend. Only Marathon game that made it to PC was 2. Everything after the Marathon games made it I believe though. However, that leaves Marathon, Marathon Infinity, Pathways Into Darkness(Which did actually happen in the same 'universe' as Marathon, only on Earth and a lot earlier in time...), Minotaur... maybe one or two I'm forgetting. As far as Halo/Marathon connections... while there are plenty of hints(the frequently found but obscured Marathon symbols in Halo, combat cyborgs that have a tie to the word Mjolnir, AI constructs of questionable allegiance), there are a lot of ways the timelines just don't coincide. *heh* For one thing, the humans have some form of FTL travel in the Halo universe, and tecnically Halo should occur before Marathon based upon what dates have been mentioned in both. However, post Marathon 2(I believe... might have been post Marathon 1), Durandal is stated to have taught humans their first method of FTL travel. That said, beyond the simple thematic similarities, there are the 'Cortana e-mails' which could be used as evidence for a Halo occurs in the Marathon/Pathways universe. Back when Halo was still a 'PC/Mac title,' and before the entire X-Box thing, there were some e-mails from a supposed 'Cortana' to the guy who runs the Marathon Story page. Aside from being a cute publicity stunt, everything in them pointed to ties to Marathon... Fitting Halo into the Marathon/Pathways universe might be intended, but with what we've seen so far, it won't be easy and have a lot of continuity issues...
Well, knowing Marathon, from your description I'm not certain there's much similarity to Portal, outside of the fact that both stories center on a single AI character communicating with the character as the medium for the story... Marathon was, at surface level, a fairly standard action in a SF setting plot. Aliens attack a colony ship, you(with guidance by the ships AI) help fight off the attackers. The story was well put together for the time(instead of a single page of text before the game and at the end and nothing in the middle, you get multiple updates per level), but if you didn't try and dig deeper and just accepted it at face value, it was a well done for the time but nothing fancy(particularly by totdays standards) story. The trick is, if you try to analyze what the various terminals in Marathon say, and answer some unanswered questions you realize that there was a lot more going on than just the surface level story implies. Unless you've played the game, and gone to the previously linked Marathon Story page, it's hard to convey just how significant this 'hidden story' aspect is. Just about every terminal in the game has some hidden meaning in it... and there are a lot of terminals. The one sad thing is, the terminal driven plot really helped facilitate this 'story by misdirection,' and I'm not certain the same impressive web could be achieved with cut scenes, voice overs and the like...
If you can survive on 12k in the Detroit area, then I'd have to say Detroit is on the low cost side of things relative to other locations. Now, admittedly, I'm used to dealing with Boston(the Boston area, nowhere near downtown actually) which from most recent studies(as I recall) is the single most expensive locale to live in the country. You'll spend nearly 12k a year on housing alone in this area.
You do make some good points, but I think you miss one major issue. Cost of living varies tremendously based on location. Even taking the base assumption of 'In the US,' there can be a huge difference in expenses based on location. $35k / year in South Carolina and you can definitely live comfortably, you won't be able to spend exorbitantly, but you can live in a decent neighborhood, shouldn't ever need to worry about making ends meet, and should have a healthy bit of surplus income to spend on the nicer things. $35k / year in the Boston area on the other hand, you'll have to take whatever housing options you can manage to afford, and you won't have the 'comfort margin' that allows you to not worry about paying bills and provides you with plenty of spending cash that the 35k in SC would. That said, the point on OSHA regulations is a real good one, and it is true that many(probably most) salaried employees have an income that should be sufficient for their location. I'm just think that there's not really a single 'flat minimum sufficient income' since cost of living is so location dependent.
Actually, as far as HAL goes, if I recall correctly, the reason for HAL going insane had nothing to do with becoming self aware, but was because lying and witholding information were against the 'nature' of hs programming, and he was instructed to lie/withold information(regarding the sighting of a monolith near Jupiter) from the crew...
CG Movie versus game remake? Since we're talking about Square, there isn't much difference between the two to begin with.
Zelda wasn't exactly the example I was thinking of. I was thinking of games similar to the Mana series from Squaresoft(including Secret of Mana, and the earlier gameboy game that was relabeled 'Final Fantasy Adventure' for the US release). I'm pretty certain the Mana series predates Diablo, and your stats do determine accuracy in those games, as opposed to the Zelda games where players twitch skill plays a mutch larger role.
Admittedly, this still leaves Diablo as the first action RPG that is heavier on the RPG side of the scale and uses randomly generated levels...
Er... Maybe I've got my dates and timelines mixed up, but I think action RPG's were around on consoles for quite a while before Diablo came along...
> The downside of all of this...siezures. I've seen Johhny Mnemonic, I know what happens when people get too much digital stimulation.
Funny, I thought the old wives tale was that it would make you go blind, not have seizures...
Depends, do you count the original Japanese release, or the non-Japanese release which took part long afterwards... The original release was from all accounts I've heard of, typical for a MMORPG, or in other words bug ridden. Only reason it seemed smooth in the US(and other locales), was that they joined quite awhile after the actual launch, in fact the first expansion was already released and patched up before the worldwide release...
Considering the original Pirates! had the open ended gaming, missions present if you decide to do them sort of style long before even the first GTA, I think it would be more appropriate to say that GTA has a Pirates! style feel to it...
Funny, I thought FFX was actually a good example of 'let's stick to the current trends' rather than some major departure from the norm.
While not true of all recent games, there has been a trend to less gameplay, more cut scenes. I'd argue that Square has been one of the companies leading that trend, and that FFX was just a simple case of following that formula.
Then again, I must admit I'm not the biggest fan of Square... They make good games, but I really think they are by far the most over rated developers in the business.
While motion sensors could definitely work, they border on overkill for this. Simply leave a readily accessible switch in each room, and let people turn it on manually. If you want to get fancy, having a simple 'music is available' light next to the switch for powering the speakers might be nice. (Probably be easy to rig up by modifying one of those light switch's with the dummy light that are used for attic lights and the like).
Yeah, but it take him 18 months to beat it.
Well, I don't think I whine about how Halo came out, but I must say I am disapointed with it. Mostly this comes from being a Bungie fan for quite a long while.
I liked Halo, but it didn't blow me away the way Marathon did. Bungie was, at least at one point in time, capable of doing a lot better. I was expecting a lot more in terms of story, level design, story, length of single player campaign, and story(Yes, story really was that integral to Marathon...).
Er... You do realize that of this console generation, only the XBox has more texture memory than the Gamecube? Both the PS2 and the Dreamcast had less... I may be fuzzy on the Dreamcast, but I know for certain the PS2 has the absolute least memory for textures.
A hard drive has been present for ages in computer gaming, and it doesn't bring about many 'innovations.' The ability to add content/patch the application post-release(generally a good ability, but then again the ability to patch applications is arguably part of the reason PC games have a penchant for shipping buggy), the ability to have huge save game states, the ability to use hard disk as swap space that is faster than removable media, but not at RAM speed. That's really all the hard disk brings to the table.
Also, there's an even more cynical take on the hard drive. It wasn't there for any form of innovation at all, but is there because Microsoft was trying to build a console to leverage the existing computer game industry to build a game library of shovelware ports of PC games.
As far as the expense of the hard drive, there is also the failure rate of hard drives to take into account...
Well, to nitpick this offtopic thread just a little more...
In Japan, there were three distinct animated incarnations of Kenshin. A TV series which(mostly) covered the original comics storyline. A movie which was set after the TV show, and had an original non-comic based story. Finally, there was a direct to video release that was the back story of the main character.
Things get odd when licensing for the US release comes into play. The three animated incarnations of Kenshin got split up between two(maybe three, but I think it's two) companies. One of the companies involved retitles the portion they have the rights for US release as "Samurai X," the other portions are released under the Rurouni Kenshin moniker.