I have a Cube and a PS2 for a playing games and the Dreamcast is still my favourite console.
My favourite thing about the Dreamcast is it has 4 controller ports, modem included standard, most games have native VGA support meaning I can play my games on a computer monitor on a proper adaptor (none of this up scan crap), 50/60 hz selection so I don't have to worry about slowdown on crappy ports, and easy bypassing of the region protection so I can play U.S and Jap games on it (I live in Australia so my console is PAL). Of course the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox has some of these features but not all of them. The region bypassing is my favourite bit of the Dreamcast because I dont have to risk modifying my console or fork out cash for a action replay/region x. Aussie games are either overpriced/sloppily ported and take eons to get released here.
All Dreamcasts sold in Australia and those manufactured I think before Sept 2000 in the U.S. can read cdr and cdrw disc which is how I can run a boot disc on it to play out of region games on it.
I heard the Sony and Microsoft 'quality assurance' program makes it difficult for 2d games to be okayed on their system so 2D fans should be overjoyed at owning a Dreamcast because the 2D Kings, SNK and Capcom loved the Dreamcast to death and flooded it with many excellent scrollers and fighters. Games like Mars Matrix, Project Justice, King of Fighters series, gigiwing 1 and 2, vampire chronicles
A couple of other games you won't find anywhere else except on Dreamcst are: Daytona Powerstone 2 (this game rocks. its like Super Smash Bros except in 3D), illbleed -- fun adventure horror game D2 -- another horror, fun but the graphics aren't the best confidential mission - gun game
toy commander -- hard game where you play as one of x toys, completing objectives Soul Calibur -- this really shows what the console was capable of and it was a launch game! Shenmue 1 -- those who played shenmue 2 on xbox need this! theres a couple of sega beat-em-ups too but they were so
Firepro wrestling (japanese only but it has a strong following of fans) Record of Lodoss War Anime-ish rpg Seaman -- like a tomakachi (spelling) except you bring up a fish using a microphone and it talks back to you ecco the dolphin -- the most beautful underwater game. its like playing a screensaver! Bangai O -- shooter by treasure of radiant silvergun fame
I used to run fracint to burn-in my computer.:) Back then I programmed my own menu using simple batch files and my screensaver was a fireworks program. ahh, good times, good times!
that article I linked to, I think they got some things confused because they said Nvidia bought Aureal but I remember the news from back then that Creative bought them out. A quick search on google confirms this
http://www.gaming-age.com/news/2000/9/22-165
http://www.inetria.com/hardware.shtml
A search using the terms "aureal buys creative" on google does not return any positive results.
I remember that. I hate Creative for that. They hit Aureal with eroneous lawsuits, none of which they won. All the while developers and, stores steered clear of Aureal because of Creative's accusations. When Aureals money ran dry, Creative came to the 'rescue' bought them and ripped the company apart. I haven't bought a creative card since the Awe64 gold. On my lastest PC I proudly own a Nvidia Soundstorm sound processor integrated on the motherboard. Nvidia announced they are intending to sell this as a stand alone product so Creative better watch out!
But I go one step further, I'm extra paranoid about the ink might absorbing through the label side and getting into the film so I make sure when I write on the disc I do it on the inner clear ring where theres no data. Theres no much room to write and you have to write circularly but it's enough for me.
Generally I avoid cdrs which I can see the text through when I hold it up to the light.
I agree with your final comment. If its worth burning its worth getting good CDRs. What good is burning something to disc if the medium is unreadable when you need it?
I've bought many brands of CDR's over the years from Sony, Pioneer, TDK, Mitsui, Kodaks, Laser and all have worked fine for me.
TDK gets somebody else to makes their discs and I've gone through a few different TDK-branded disc coming from differenet factories and I haven't had a reliabilty problem with any of them. Mitsui and Kodak golds are my favourties but they're hard to find now. Lasers are cheap and havent had any problems using them. I had some issues with Imation discs, the label side developed a yellow tint before becoming unreadable soon afterwards.
I've had lots of problems with no name brands. CRC errors galore after a few months despite me keeping them out of the sunlight (or room light) in the filing cabinet along with all my other CDRs.
Most of my coasters are from burn failures due to my fault, buffer underruns when I had my old computer, and the dye disapearing. I've never had a problem from scratched cdrs or the label side peeling off but then my use of cdrs is usually to burn them to disc and then stuffing them into my filing cabinet until I need to reghost my HD.
Dreamcast broadband adapters were expensive and made in extremely limited quanities . I think playing over dial-up drove a lot of people away in addition to all the hacking that went on on there.
yea I usually buy name-brand discs but one time I bought some sh!tty brand Traxdata's for a buck each. All of the discs work fine to this day and I bought them in 2000.
I'll just like to add to that list, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Its out in Japan already and currently getting ported into english (2004ish release). I already have a cube and thats the biggest title I'm waiting for atm along with Mario Kart Double Dash.
um... its a far cry from just spinning the disc. Their walkmans have 2 screens, one on the remote and one on the unit. The remote is backlit and in some models so is the screen on the unit but for some reason Sony decided not to put it on their lastest top of the line model.
LCD screen technology? Their 5inch PSOne screen only consumes 350mA when the light tube is replaced with LEDs. It shouldnt be too difficult for them to integrate that into a handheld while at the same time keeping power requirements low.
Speakers... well their walkmans are outputting sound through the earphones when they're giving 50hrs playback time, that means something right? Personally I'd rather use earphones anyway as I find the built-in speakers on handhelds less than adequate. Plugging in portable beach speakers won't sound very loud, but it is as loud as the music from the GBASP turned all the way up. When I bought my walkman I did such a test and had it on continuous play on a pair of cheapish unpowered speakers. I was surprised when I got ~10ish hours playing time on the MZ-N10 before the internal battery went flat.
I don't have the dimensions for the internal battery as its sealed inside the unit but take a look at this pic. MZ-N10 battery The smaller battery is the one used in the MZ-N10. To get an idea of its size the bigger battery in the pic has dimensions of 67x25x6mm. The only thing I could find on the MZ-N10 battery is that it's only 3mm thin. 3mm!! And that gives 24 hrs playback time (58 if you use an AA battery as well). That's a incredible running time on a battery that small. While I don't doubt the PSP will draw more power than their walkmans, I think Sony will be able to get good running times out of the PSP.
On the price, Sony have already said it will cost 19,000 to 30,000 yen (USD 159 - 251) at launch. Much higher than the GBA but as production ramps up so will the cost to produce it fall.
And one of the first 'problem' areas I had with it was the noise gernerated by the fans. I bought a volcano 11.. sounded like a jet engine taking off and I only had the dial at 3500rpm (full speed is 5000+). My solution was to remove the metal grill which covered about 50% of the top. It was really badly designed and after getting rid of it not only was the pc quieter but it was cooler too. I know I should bought a aeroflow but that was the only one I could find in my town and I needed it in a rush.
naw office is their biggest cash cow after windows. they know this too thats why ms is reluctant to integrate a spell checking into windows. they'll never give it away. Giving away stuff for ms only happens when they dont have dominant market share or they're in danger of losing it if its not bundled.
They also had a huge problem with reliability issues known as COD (click of death) where the drive would make click click click noises and render the disks permanantly unreadable. I think that turned a lot of people away from Zip disks.
yes we are PAL here. I have the dvd right next to me. It got released in 2 packages. One, the normal edition, in a standard amaray case with 1 dvd containing just the movie and the other comes in a cardboard slipcase and a bonus dvd of extras. (In the U.S it got released as a 2disc set standard I believe?). The 2disc set here is supposedly limited to just 10000 copies but it can still be found quite commonly.
There's alredy been a chinese on Star Trek. I say this in past tense since Voyager got axed. Garett Wang (Harry Kim, Comms Officer) is of Chinese descent.
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't they just look at the download logs on their servers serving fake songs?
Not if he has a very short life.
I have a Cube and a PS2 for a playing games and the Dreamcast is still my favourite console.
My favourite thing about the Dreamcast is it has 4 controller ports, modem included standard, most games have native VGA support meaning I can play my games on a computer monitor on a proper adaptor (none of this up scan crap), 50/60 hz selection so I don't have to worry about slowdown on crappy ports, and easy bypassing of the region protection so I can play U.S and Jap games on it (I live in Australia so my console is PAL). Of course the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox has some of these features but not all of them. The region bypassing is my favourite bit of the Dreamcast because I dont have to risk modifying my console or fork out cash for a action replay/region x. Aussie games are either overpriced/sloppily ported and take eons to get released here.
All Dreamcasts sold in Australia and those manufactured I think before Sept 2000 in the U.S. can read cdr and cdrw disc which is how I can run a boot disc on it to play out of region games on it.
I heard the Sony and Microsoft 'quality assurance' program makes it difficult for 2d games to be okayed on their system so 2D fans should be overjoyed at owning a Dreamcast because the 2D Kings, SNK and Capcom loved the Dreamcast to death and flooded it with many excellent scrollers and fighters. Games like Mars Matrix, Project Justice, King of Fighters series, gigiwing 1 and 2, vampire chronicles
A couple of other games you won't find anywhere else except on Dreamcst are:
Daytona
Powerstone 2 (this game rocks. its like Super Smash Bros except in 3D),
illbleed -- fun adventure horror game
D2 -- another horror, fun but the graphics aren't the best
confidential mission - gun game
toy commander -- hard game where you play as one of x toys, completing objectives
Soul Calibur -- this really shows what the console was capable of and it was a launch game!
Shenmue 1 -- those who played shenmue 2 on xbox need this!
theres a couple of sega beat-em-ups too but they were so
Firepro wrestling (japanese only but it has a strong following of fans)
Record of Lodoss War Anime-ish rpg
Seaman -- like a tomakachi (spelling) except you bring up a fish using a microphone and it talks back to you
ecco the dolphin -- the most beautful underwater game. its like playing a screensaver!
Bangai O -- shooter by treasure of radiant silvergun fame
I like the part on their site which says:
"No major label connections.
We are not evil. "
XDD
I used to run fracint to burn-in my computer. :)
Back then I programmed my own menu using simple batch files and my screensaver was a fireworks program. ahh, good times, good times!
I can still remember reading about Orchid Farenheit cards in those $10 import magazines.
that article I linked to, I think they got some things confused because they said Nvidia bought Aureal but I remember the news from back then that Creative bought them out. A quick search on google confirms this
http://www.gaming-age.com/news/2000/9/22-165
http://www.inetria.com/hardware.shtml
A search using the terms "aureal buys creative" on google does not return any positive results.
I remember that. I hate Creative for that. They hit Aureal with eroneous lawsuits, none of which they won. All the while developers and, stores steered clear of Aureal because of Creative's accusations. When Aureals money ran dry, Creative came to the 'rescue' bought them and ripped the company apart. I haven't bought a creative card since the Awe64 gold. On my lastest PC I proudly own a Nvidia Soundstorm sound processor integrated on the motherboard. Nvidia announced they are intending to sell this as a stand alone product so Creative better watch out!
hack and slash is another term for it.
Ditto.
But I go one step further, I'm extra paranoid about the ink might absorbing through the label side and getting into the film so I make sure when I write on the disc I do it on the inner clear ring where theres no data. Theres no much room to write and you have to write circularly but it's enough for me.
Generally I avoid cdrs which I can see the text through when I hold it up to the light.
I agree with your final comment. If its worth burning its worth getting good CDRs. What good is burning something to disc if the medium is unreadable when you need it?
I've bought many brands of CDR's over the years from Sony, Pioneer, TDK, Mitsui, Kodaks, Laser and all have worked fine for me.
TDK gets somebody else to makes their discs and I've gone through a few different TDK-branded disc coming from differenet factories and I haven't had a reliabilty problem with any of them. Mitsui and Kodak golds are my favourties but they're hard to find now. Lasers are cheap and havent had any problems using them. I had some issues with Imation discs, the label side developed a yellow tint before becoming unreadable soon afterwards.
I've had lots of problems with no name brands. CRC errors galore after a few months despite me keeping them out of the sunlight (or room light) in the filing cabinet along with all my other CDRs.
Most of my coasters are from burn failures due to my fault, buffer underruns when I had my old computer, and the dye disapearing. I've never had a problem from scratched cdrs or the label side peeling off but then my use of cdrs is usually to burn them to disc and then stuffing them into my filing cabinet until I need to reghost my HD.
Dreamcast broadband adapters were expensive and made in extremely limited quanities . I think playing over dial-up drove a lot of people away in addition to all the hacking that went on on there.
yea I usually buy name-brand discs but one time I bought some sh!tty brand Traxdata's for a buck each. All of the discs work fine to this day and I bought them in 2000.
Crystal Chronicles is different than the other Final Fantasies. it's hack and slash, kind of like Diablo if you've played that.
I'll just like to add to that list, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Its out in Japan already and currently getting ported into english (2004ish release). I already have a cube and thats the biggest title I'm waiting for atm along with Mario Kart Double Dash.
um... its a far cry from just spinning the disc. Their walkmans have 2 screens, one on the remote and one on the unit. The remote is backlit and in some models so is the screen on the unit but for some reason Sony decided not to put it on their lastest top of the line model.
LCD screen technology? Their 5inch PSOne screen only consumes 350mA when the light tube is replaced with LEDs. It shouldnt be too difficult for them to integrate that into a handheld while at the same time keeping power requirements low.
Speakers... well their walkmans are outputting sound through the earphones when they're giving 50hrs playback time, that means something right? Personally I'd rather use earphones anyway as I find the built-in speakers on handhelds less than adequate. Plugging in portable beach speakers won't sound very loud, but it is as loud as the music from the GBASP turned all the way up. When I bought my walkman I did such a test and had it on continuous play on a pair of cheapish unpowered speakers. I was surprised when I got ~10ish hours playing time on the MZ-N10 before the internal battery went flat.
I don't have the dimensions for the internal battery as its sealed inside the unit but take a look at this pic. MZ-N10 battery The smaller battery is the one used in the MZ-N10. To get an idea of its size the bigger battery in the pic has dimensions of 67x25x6mm. The only thing I could find on the MZ-N10 battery is that it's only 3mm thin. 3mm!! And that gives 24 hrs playback time (58 if you use an AA battery as well). That's a incredible running time on a battery that small.
While I don't doubt the PSP will draw more power than their walkmans, I think Sony will be able to get good running times out of the PSP.
On the price, Sony have already said it will cost 19,000 to 30,000 yen (USD 159 - 251) at launch. Much higher than the GBA but as production ramps up so will the cost to produce it fall.
Sony's minidisc walkmans have about 50+ hours on one charge. I think good battery life will be one of least worries for Sony.
And one of the first 'problem' areas I had with it was the noise gernerated by the fans. I bought a volcano 11.. sounded like a jet engine taking off and I only had the dial at 3500rpm (full speed is 5000+). My solution was to remove the metal grill which covered about 50% of the top. It was really badly designed and after getting rid of it not only was the pc quieter but it was cooler too. I know I should bought a aeroflow but that was the only one I could find in my town and I needed it in a rush.
Not only that but the heirs of the creator of Pooh Bear are sueing Disney for shortchanging them in royalties.
Which franchise does Diney gets its most $$$ from? Not Mickey mouse or Donald Duck or any other Disney creation... it's Pooh.
spell checkER. doh!
naw office is their biggest cash cow after windows.
they know this too thats why ms is reluctant to integrate a spell checking into windows. they'll never give it away. Giving away stuff for ms only happens when they dont have dominant market share or they're in danger of losing it if its not bundled.
They also had a huge problem with reliability issues known as COD (click of death) where the drive would make click click click noises and render the disks permanantly unreadable. I think that turned a lot of people away from Zip disks.
yes we are PAL here. I have the dvd right next to me. It got released in 2 packages. One, the normal edition, in a standard amaray case with 1 dvd containing just the movie and the other comes in a cardboard slipcase and a bonus dvd of extras. (In the U.S it got released as a 2disc set standard I believe?). The 2disc set here is supposedly limited to just 10000 copies but it can still be found quite commonly.
:(
They havent released CAstle in the sky here yet
There's alredy been a chinese on Star Trek. I say this in past tense since Voyager got axed. Garett Wang (Harry Kim, Comms Officer) is of Chinese descent.