I pulled out my old second edition Paranoia stuff one night with the group I played D&D with. They had never even heard of the game before, but got the hang of it quick enough. Within the first 30 minuets 2 players were already down 3 clones apiece, several others had lost a clone, and a major reactor leak killing several thousand citizens resulted from an over entusiastic attempt to retrive a bag of crunchy-time algea chips from a fission powered snack machine. Even if I never get the chance to play it, I will definately be buying the book.
In short, it's the best pen and paper RPG ever made. Not that I am biased or anything.
The PS2, and the forthcoming PS3 are the only Sony products I would ever buy for this reason exactly. For every Sony product I have bought over the years, only one of them still worked normally after about year and a half of purchase. I had to replace my Ps1, and I have already had to replace my PS2. Now one could write this off to bad luck, but of my half dozen gamer geek friends, 4 of them have had to replace their PS2s since launch.
I have owned every Nintendo system (except the virtual boy) and have never had a single problem. My NES, purchased in 1989 still works (albeit with a little bit of fighting with the cartridge loading mechanism) And while My X-box did need to be replaced a few weeks ago, I am the only person I know that suffered such ill-fortune with it.
Why do I still by Playstations? Um well I have this gaming problem and I can't help it. He doesn't hit me all the time...
PS2 is the Vanilla of the consoles; nothing all that special really, definitely weaker hardware-wise than its two main competitors. With great titles like "Fantavision" (that was sarcasm for you people having trouble keeping up) at launch, rumors of DVD driver corruption in Japan, and PS2 scarcity for the first six months after launch (less then half of the promised units shipped) it had a shaky launch, but that doesn't seem to have slowed it down.
I think that Sony has really hit their stride this time; they have a huge library, some actually really good exclusive titles (Dark Cloud 2, Ratchet and Clank, et cetera) a few decent online games (SOCOM, Champions of Norath) and a solid representation of virtually every game genre. They have gone through this round seemingly never breaking a sweat while Nintendo and Microsoft have wrestled each other for a distant number 2 position. How bad can things be when people are fighting over #2 behind your #1?
I am not sure if I should find some solace at least that it isn't just the angry mothers* in the US that have their heads shoved so far up their collective asses that they can't tell forests from trees from hemorrhoids. Once in a while it is nice to be reminded that people the world over can still be just as anal, self-important and myopic as people in my home country.
Everybody is all for freedom of speech as long as the speech they are protecting is their own, as soon as you make light of or take an opposite position to, well you get something like this.
If I liked sports and racing games, I would likely treasure my X-box more than I do, but as it stands, I consider it a 3rd place in my collection behind the Cube and PS2. This isn't to say that I don't like it, Knights of the old Republic, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Jet Set Radio Future and other titles are great exclusives, and I am looking forward to Halo 2 and Fable just to name a couple.
X-Box live on the otherhand is a bit Underwhelming (my Live ID is Underwhelmed, perhaps this is a self-fufiling prophecy?) Crimson Skies and Rainbow Six 3 have been the only recent games I have bothered to play with, and neither of them were enjoyable enough for me to put up with the army of 8 year-olds that just discovered the wonders of 4 letter words who usually inhabit most of the public games. This is more an issue of game library versus quality of the service though. I want some multiplayer RPGS or action games or something beyond glorified Death Matches and capture the Flag.
Am I happy with my Purchase? Yes, I am happy enough that I bought a new x-box when my old one died last week.
Parody is good. There are things about this game that worry me and I fear that the mechanics may be getting too dumbed down, but it could be entertaining.
Too bad nobody is making a Discworld rpg though. I wasn't a big fan of the two Discworld adventure games from a couple years back (adventure games and me don't mix) but I think that Pratchett's universe would be ripe for a game or two.
each to their own, but the cube and x-box versions added loads of content: levels, monsters, items, classes, etc. The free vs $10 a month is a strong argument, and I can understand a general unwillingness to abandon 200+ hour old characters.
Good news, though after the cube and x-box versions there isn't really any reason to still play the old one if you have access to the newer version. But I suppose some people prefer the old version just as a few people hated the Diablo 1.10 patch.
But there is something to be said about the nice warm fuzzy feelings that come with nostalgia, maybe it's just a feeling of security as you hold one of those ghastly boxy dreamcast controlers.
I wonder if Sega is going to get a bug up their asses over this? I think it is a safe bet that part of the EULA is that the game was only to be played on Sega servers.
I have to put my chips on Metroid Prime 2, even if it isn't a first party title exactly. Geist looks interesting too.
I don't think there will be a Wind Waker sequel this year (not that I don't want to be proved wrong on that conjecture) I mean, if you think back to fall of 2002 (8 months before Wind Waker 1) there was a lot of buzz about it already, details were scarce because, well this is nintendo we are talking about, but there was at least something floating around about it. Granted, for a sequel you won't need as much advanced hype since people already have a good idea of what a cel-shaded cube zelda is going to be like but I can't imagine Nintendo wouldn't be tossing out some images here and there to encourage healthy sales of the now dirt cheap gamecubes.
DC vs Marvel would be great, though I really doubt it is ever going to happen.
EA vs Marvel? Umm I can't really think of any interesting EA characters. Part of the charm of the vs Capcom line was the fact that Capcom has come up with some of the most memorable mascots over the years. The other part of the charm, is that Capcom (and SNK) are really damn good at making 2D fighters.
New characters by EA aren't going to cut it, and what are their established brands? Tiger Woods and John Madden both have some great sports titles bearing their names but how long are they going to stand up against the likes of Captain America or Iron Man? Is one of Madden's hurled Turduckens really going to be enough to knock out Wolverine?
But it doesn't have to be, and in fact it shouldn't be. I think that most people are so used to the worst examples of online gamers, that they forget that things could be better.
Consider how old windows solitaire is, and then consider how computer literate the average boss was back when this game was coded. I was still in high school back them, but to my parents and many other adults computers were these magical mysterious things only barely understood at the best of times. If I told them that I had just hacked into the Russian military mainframe they would have believed me. Telling your boss that you were tweaking some windows settings or even better fixing all those crash bugs the company had been facing would likely get you a promotion, or something.
There's an easy solution to that one, don't make an ally you can't trust.
And here lies the problem: battle.net players are randomly paired with a partner (or 2 or 3 ) for team ladder games.
There is nothing preventing the little griefers from organizing their own games on open or non league servers, so if they want to throw games there is nothing stopping them. But in league games?
Blizzard owns the servers, so you play the way Blizzard wants you to or you can go play by yourself. Getting the boot from battle.net does not make Warcraft unplayable, it just denies access to their matching service which I think is fair. Now is this whole thing going to blow up in their face? It could, we shall have to see.
The original is still one of my all time favorite games, and while there were a handful of sequels none of them were even close to as good. Tough as nails too, granted I was only like 10 when I got the game, but it took me off and on over a year to get good enough to beat it.
I fire it up on my emulator every once and awhile and its odd, but I still know the correct path through all of the stages, its imprinted that hard on my brain. That is the mark of a great game.
And I agree with your Strider nomination as well. I may be lonely with this opinion, but I liked the NES version of strider far more than the arcade or genesis versions.
You need a lot of these movies to get made before the same thing happens with videogame films. Maybe around the time when Doom 7 and TombRaider 16 hit the silver screen, somebody will make the realization you mention and put out a classic. The problem really is the sample size, we only have about a dozen crappy game movies, when we have 100 surely one of them will be good.
All you need to do, is cast an attractive young European actress, get her to flash some mammary and you will turn a profit when all is said and done. Do these films ever make the top 10? No. But they don't need to, they just need a modest run in theaters and then a modest batch of sales in the video and DVD markets and profit is yours.
Think of all the terrible slasher films of the 70s and beyond. Why do they still get made? Because they make a lot of money when you look at the big picture.
The best answer to this question depends on the demographic you are shooting for. Adult males, who it might be argued may have some sort of genetic predisposition to like videogames with titles such as Soul Caliber or a Tony Hawk game, no challenge on that one.
But what about getting our girl-friends and wives into gaming? I have found almost any 2 player co-op game works as long as it is relatively easy, and easy to play. This isn't to say that women can't play Halo, what it says is that learning how to play games takes time, and introducing a new gamer to a difficult complex game is bad idea, no matter how cute or fun it is.
Group settings are great too, Mario Party Springs to mind. As social games you can't really go wrong, and most of the mini games are simple enough that even people not familiar with the finer points of game control can get a pretty good grasp on it.
Racing games like Mario Kart, or Crash Nitrocart are generally easy to pick up and run with as well.
I don't have a home phone; I only keep the cell phone. Why? Because I can't see the point of having a land line that is only going to subject me to a constant torrent of tele-marketing. With the cell-phone if someone needs or wants to reach me, they can no matter where I happen to be. My typical response is to not reply, and then later when accused of ignoring whoever it was that was trying to reach me i can blame it on poor cell service. Land lines almost never go down and people will only buy the whole "my machine has been dodgy lately" shtick so many times. So see the Cell phone helps me keep the world at arms length through the illusion of fallibility.
This militant "I don't have a cell phone" thing perplexes me. Banal conversation is the crux of modern civilization! I won't even bother bringing up the irony of complaining about superfluous communication by posting on a message board.
I remember the packaging of another Infocom Classic "The Lurking Horror"
The game came with a fake student ID, and the best part was a rubber centipede sandwiched between two clear pieces of plastic, when I pulled the game out of the box I remember jumping when I saw it and thinking for a moment that there was a giant insect in the box with my game. (hey I was like 8 years old cut me some slack)
You have some good ideas here, and i more or less agree with you on all your points.
However, I really don't see the "original music" thing happeneing all that much. Instead I think we are headed for a similar situation to that of the cinema. Yes, some bands will attach a unique/new piece of music to an upcoming game but for the most part I think that the soundtrack practice is going to stay focused as a "product placement" type approach.
You hear Korn playing on Street, and maybe some people go "wow Korn is pretty cool I should buy/ download their album" Korn in essence becomes like "Doritos" or "mountain dew" only louder, and with fewer artifical perservatives.
Honestly I find this back and forth banter between nintendo and microsoft to be pretty funny really. When is the last time you saw two kids in the school yard arguning over who was number 2?
"Yeah we owned joo!!" "nu-uh" "uh-huh" "next to Sony we are the bestest!" "you liar we are we sold 60 gajillion units" "yeah? well we sold 90 gajillion" "well we sold infiniti units" "yeah? well we sold infiniti to the infinite power units" "well we are the best!" "what about Sony?" "Well next to Sony of course" and so on and so on...
Slashdot Mirror
I pulled out my old second edition Paranoia stuff one night with the group I played D&D with. They had never even heard of the game before, but got the hang of it quick enough. Within the first 30 minuets 2 players were already down 3 clones apiece, several others had lost a clone, and a major reactor leak killing several thousand citizens resulted from an over entusiastic attempt to retrive a bag of crunchy-time algea chips from a fission powered snack machine. Even if I never get the chance to play it, I will definately be buying the book.
In short, it's the best pen and paper RPG ever made. Not that I am biased or anything.
Who would I have to kill to get them to do a version for x-box live?
This is exactly the kind of game that live needs, FPS and sports are all fine and good, but what harm could a little variety do?
The PS2, and the forthcoming PS3 are the only Sony products I would ever buy for this reason exactly. For every Sony product I have bought over the years, only one of them still worked normally after about year and a half of purchase. I had to replace my Ps1, and I have already had to replace my PS2. Now one could write this off to bad luck, but of my half dozen gamer geek friends, 4 of them have had to replace their PS2s since launch.
I have owned every Nintendo system (except the virtual boy) and have never had a single problem. My NES, purchased in 1989 still works (albeit with a little bit of fighting with the cartridge loading mechanism) And while My X-box did need to be replaced a few weeks ago, I am the only person I know that suffered such ill-fortune with it.
Why do I still by Playstations? Um well I have this gaming problem and I can't help it. He doesn't hit me all the time...
PS2 is the Vanilla of the consoles; nothing all that special really, definitely weaker hardware-wise than its two main competitors. With great titles like "Fantavision" (that was sarcasm for you people having trouble keeping up) at launch, rumors of DVD driver corruption in Japan, and PS2 scarcity for the first six months after launch (less then half of the promised units shipped) it had a shaky launch, but that doesn't seem to have slowed it down.
I think that Sony has really hit their stride this time; they have a huge library, some actually really good exclusive titles (Dark Cloud 2, Ratchet and Clank, et cetera) a few decent online games (SOCOM, Champions of Norath) and a solid representation of virtually every game genre. They have gone through this round seemingly never breaking a sweat while Nintendo and Microsoft have wrestled each other for a distant number 2 position. How bad can things be when people are fighting over #2 behind your #1?
I am not sure if I should find some solace at least that it isn't just the angry mothers* in the US that have their heads shoved so far up their collective asses that they can't tell forests from trees from hemorrhoids. Once in a while it is nice to be reminded that people the world over can still be just as anal, self-important and myopic as people in my home country.
Everybody is all for freedom of speech as long as the speech they are protecting is their own, as soon as you make light of or take an opposite position to, well you get something like this.
*fathers, and child-free individuals as well
If I liked sports and racing games, I would likely treasure my X-box more than I do, but as it stands, I consider it a 3rd place in my collection behind the Cube and PS2. This isn't to say that I don't like it, Knights of the old Republic, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Jet Set Radio Future and other titles are great exclusives, and I am looking forward to Halo 2 and Fable just to name a couple.
X-Box live on the otherhand is a bit Underwhelming (my Live ID is Underwhelmed, perhaps this is a self-fufiling prophecy?) Crimson Skies and Rainbow Six 3 have been the only recent games I have bothered to play with, and neither of them were enjoyable enough for me to put up with the army of 8 year-olds that just discovered the wonders of 4 letter words who usually inhabit most of the public games. This is more an issue of game library versus quality of the service though. I want some multiplayer RPGS or action games or something beyond glorified Death Matches and capture the Flag.
Am I happy with my Purchase? Yes, I am happy enough that I bought a new x-box when my old one died last week.
Parody is good. There are things about this game that worry me and I fear that the mechanics may be getting too dumbed down, but it could be entertaining.
Too bad nobody is making a Discworld rpg though. I wasn't a big fan of the two Discworld adventure games from a couple years back (adventure games and me don't mix) but I think that Pratchett's universe would be ripe for a game or two.
each to their own, but the cube and x-box versions added loads of content: levels, monsters, items, classes, etc. The free vs $10 a month is a strong argument, and I can understand a general unwillingness to abandon 200+ hour old characters.
Good news, though after the cube and x-box versions there isn't really any reason to still play the old one if you have access to the newer version. But I suppose some people prefer the old version just as a few people hated the Diablo 1.10 patch.
But there is something to be said about the nice warm fuzzy feelings that come with nostalgia, maybe it's just a feeling of security as you hold one of those ghastly boxy dreamcast controlers.
I wonder if Sega is going to get a bug up their asses over this? I think it is a safe bet that part of the EULA is that the game was only to be played on Sega servers.
I have to put my chips on Metroid Prime 2, even if it isn't a first party title exactly. Geist looks interesting too.
I don't think there will be a Wind Waker sequel this year (not that I don't want to be proved wrong on that conjecture) I mean, if you think back to fall of 2002 (8 months before Wind Waker 1) there was a lot of buzz about it already, details were scarce because, well this is nintendo we are talking about, but there was at least something floating around about it. Granted, for a sequel you won't need as much advanced hype since people already have a good idea of what a cel-shaded cube zelda is going to be like but I can't imagine Nintendo wouldn't be tossing out some images here and there to encourage healthy sales of the now dirt cheap gamecubes.
DC vs Marvel would be great, though I really doubt it is ever going to happen.
EA vs Marvel? Umm I can't really think of any interesting EA characters. Part of the charm of the vs Capcom line was the fact that Capcom has come up with some of the most memorable mascots over the years. The other part of the charm, is that Capcom (and SNK) are really damn good at making 2D fighters.
New characters by EA aren't going to cut it, and what are their established brands? Tiger Woods and John Madden both have some great sports titles bearing their names but how long are they going to stand up against the likes of Captain America or Iron Man? Is one of Madden's hurled Turduckens really going to be enough to knock out Wolverine?
But it doesn't have to be, and in fact it shouldn't be. I think that most people are so used to the worst examples of online gamers, that they forget that things could be better.
I don't know....
Consider how old windows solitaire is, and then consider how computer literate the average boss was back when this game was coded. I was still in high school back them, but to my parents and many other adults computers were these magical mysterious things only barely understood at the best of times. If I told them that I had just hacked into the Russian military mainframe they would have believed me. Telling your boss that you were tweaking some windows settings or even better fixing all those crash bugs the company had been facing would likely get you a promotion, or something.
There's an easy solution to that one, don't make an ally you can't trust.
And here lies the problem: battle.net players are randomly paired with a partner (or 2 or 3 ) for team ladder games.
There is nothing preventing the little griefers from organizing their own games on open or non league servers, so if they want to throw games there is nothing stopping them. But in league games?
Blizzard owns the servers, so you play the way Blizzard wants you to or you can go play by yourself. Getting the boot from battle.net does not make Warcraft unplayable, it just denies access to their matching service which I think is fair. Now is this whole thing going to blow up in their face? It could, we shall have to see.
Blaster Master
The original is still one of my all time favorite games, and while there were a handful of sequels none of them were even close to as good. Tough as nails too, granted I was only like 10 when I got the game, but it took me off and on over a year to get good enough to beat it.
I fire it up on my emulator every once and awhile and its odd, but I still know the correct path through all of the stages, its imprinted that hard on my brain. That is the mark of a great game.
And I agree with your Strider nomination as well. I may be lonely with this opinion, but I liked the NES version of strider far more than the arcade or genesis versions.
I thought of the exact same thing when I read this article, but you beat me to it.
Now we better just find a way to dodge his magic missiles.
You are one hundred percent correct.
You need a lot of these movies to get made before the same thing happens with videogame films. Maybe around the time when Doom 7 and TombRaider 16 hit the silver screen, somebody will make the realization you mention and put out a classic. The problem really is the sample size, we only have about a dozen crappy game movies, when we have 100 surely one of them will be good.
15-25 mil is pretty cheap for a film, really.
All you need to do, is cast an attractive young European actress, get her to flash some mammary and you will turn a profit when all is said and done. Do these films ever make the top 10? No. But they don't need to, they just need a modest run in theaters and then a modest batch of sales in the video and DVD markets and profit is yours.
Think of all the terrible slasher films of the 70s and beyond. Why do they still get made? Because they make a lot of money when you look at the big picture.
The best answer to this question depends on the demographic you are shooting for. Adult males, who it might be argued may have some sort of genetic predisposition to like videogames with titles such as Soul Caliber or a Tony Hawk game, no challenge on that one. But what about getting our girl-friends and wives into gaming? I have found almost any 2 player co-op game works as long as it is relatively easy, and easy to play. This isn't to say that women can't play Halo, what it says is that learning how to play games takes time, and introducing a new gamer to a difficult complex game is bad idea, no matter how cute or fun it is. Group settings are great too, Mario Party Springs to mind. As social games you can't really go wrong, and most of the mini games are simple enough that even people not familiar with the finer points of game control can get a pretty good grasp on it. Racing games like Mario Kart, or Crash Nitrocart are generally easy to pick up and run with as well.
The point is, that in order for a game to be considered "mature" or "adult", it may feature only "immature" and "juvenile" humor.
Remember, if you have to think, it isn't manly.
umm.... she isn't working at Arkham Asylum by any chance is she?
Here is my take:
I don't have a home phone; I only keep the cell phone. Why? Because I can't see the point of having a land line that is only going to subject me to a constant torrent of tele-marketing. With the cell-phone if someone needs or wants to reach me, they can no matter where I happen to be. My typical response is to not reply, and then later when accused of ignoring whoever it was that was trying to reach me i can blame it on poor cell service. Land lines almost never go down and people will only buy the whole "my machine has been dodgy lately" shtick so many times. So see the Cell phone helps me keep the world at arms length through the illusion of fallibility.
This militant "I don't have a cell phone" thing perplexes me. Banal conversation is the crux of modern civilization! I won't even bother bringing up the irony of complaining about superfluous communication by posting on a message board.
I remember the packaging of another Infocom Classic "The Lurking Horror"
The game came with a fake student ID, and the best part was a rubber centipede sandwiched between two clear pieces of plastic, when I pulled the game out of the box I remember jumping when I saw it and thinking for a moment that there was a giant insect in the box with my game. (hey I was like 8 years old cut me some slack)
You have some good ideas here, and i more or less agree with you on all your points.
However, I really don't see the "original music" thing happeneing all that much. Instead I think we are headed for a similar situation to that of the cinema. Yes, some bands will attach a unique/new piece of music to an upcoming game but for the most part I think that the soundtrack practice is going to stay focused as a "product placement" type approach.
You hear Korn playing on Street, and maybe some people go "wow Korn is pretty cool I should buy/ download their album" Korn in essence becomes like "Doritos" or "mountain dew" only louder, and with fewer artifical perservatives.
Enya doing a game soundtrack? How about Halo 2?
Well this is going to get ugly pretty quick.
Honestly I find this back and forth banter between nintendo and microsoft to be pretty funny really. When is the last time you saw two kids in the school yard arguning over who was number 2?
"Yeah we owned joo!!"
"nu-uh"
"uh-huh"
"next to Sony we are the bestest!"
"you liar we are we sold 60 gajillion units"
"yeah? well we sold 90 gajillion"
"well we sold infiniti units"
"yeah? well we sold infiniti to the infinite power units"
"well we are the best!"
"what about Sony?"
"Well next to Sony of course"
and so on and so on...