Have any DS release titles been shown that have graphics comparable to WaveRace64 (which was what, the second domestic N64 release?), never mind a "lot better"? I certainly haven't seen any.
And apparently games like Ridge Racer DS already have framerate issues.
You are probably right about the 3D using lots of PSP battery life, but let's not pretend the DS has demonstrated any real graphics prowness (yet).
Maybe someone should notice that there are some kickass games beyond those on the PS2. Likewise, there are some kickass games beyond those on the GC (and the obligatory PC game DOOM3).:D
GTA3 and up all use the Renderware engine, licensed by Criterion (who is now owned by EA). So Rockstar would need EA's position to release the source...which kind of seems unlikely to me.
You can probably get your PS2 fixed for free (minus shipping), assuming you live in the US. Sony lost a class action lawsuit because of their crappy drives, so they fix them for free as a punishment. Check out the Disc Read Error Sony Repair FAQ here (no direct linking allowed).
And like others noted, you are pretty wrong on your Xbox complaint. This is to prevent cheating, which 95% of Live users are very, very happy to support!
I mean licensed games like from television shows, films, Disney, etc., of course. It's been a long time since any major console had to worry about unlicensed games, but if you know a better term for what I mean, please share!
It appears just about all the good ideas in 2D have been taken, which is why you get so many ports, sequels, and adaptations of existing franchises into existing game engines. See, I just don't agree with that, if nothing else because the old NES had a bigger 2D game variety than the GBA does, IMO. Some ideas, some nascent evolutionary paths, have been adandoned (ex: Solar Jetman).
But an even bigger problem is that these new 2D games are usually worse than the old 2D games. And where is Nintendo's new Super Mario World for GBA? Where is their new Link to the Past? With a couple of exceptions (like you mentioned, Made in Wario is pretty good), Nintendo simply isn't offering anything remotely innovative or even as high quality as their old games (unless it is an exact port of those games, of which there are plenty!). Nintendo is treading water with the GBA, going only for their traditional safe narrow markets (like you pointed out, this is nostalgia buffs and young children). People didn't love the NES or SNES games only because they were children, we loved them because they were innovative, excellent games. If Nintendo really starts to make those games again, maybe then we can give them some kudos for the GBA.
Yeah, all those things have really set the gaming world on fire!:D
(Admittedly the GBA has done well, but one look at its library consisting almost entirely of ports and various licensed games shows who its market is.)
Meanwhile, what has poor old Nintendo done? They've hooked up with Intelligent Systems (Paper Mario GC, Advance Wars I and II for GBA) and Retro Studios (Metroid: Prime). Surely they got in the ground floor with these companies too, and so didn't have to pay a mint for them.
The rest of your post was pretty good, but this claim is just silly. Intelligent Systems has been making games for Nintendo for a very long time. Most of its experienced staff worked for the company when it was known as R&D1, under Gumpei Yokoi. They are Nintendo's first developmental team - they even created the Gameboy! Not only that, but Metroid, Fire Emblem, Famicom Wars (Advance Wars' ancestor, obviously), the BattleClash series (the second one was quite good and underrated, IMO), Excitebike, and lots more. Don't let the semi-newish name fool you - Intelligent Systems is an old school Nintendo internal team. I guess you could say Nintendo did get in on the ground floor, just two decades ago.:D (A list of most of their games can be found here. Most of it is in Japanese, but the links and pictures are obvious enough.)
Retro Studios was created by Nintendo, too, just much more recently. Most of the staff is Digipen (the North American Nintendo-supported school for videogame development) graduates, IIRC.
(Rare has already released an Xbox game, as well: Grabbed by the Ghoulies. A lot of fanboys and reviewers were pretty hard on it, but I think it is pretty cool little Rare game, just more Blast Corps than Goldeneye. And who has been saying that Conker plays poorly? Not that you can trust them that much, but every preview I have seen speaks very highly of its E3 showing.)
No, the Coward is saying that neither Nintendo or id overpromise what they offer - and that is easy because they usually don't promise or offer much more than un-inspired remakes. Seems like a fair enough statement to me.
(I am trying to avoid a flamewar here, but this is dangerous ground to tread on games.slashdot...)
I don't know why you would think this is some bizarre and unheard of accusation directed towards Nintendo. Hardcore Nintendo fans always seem to be surprised by this kind of claim, even though people are always mentioning it. The only halfway original Gamecube game to come out from Nintendo is Pikmin, right? The rest are N64/GBA ports(Animal Crossing, Made in Wario)/ remakes(Pokemon Colleseum)/ sequels(Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Mario Gold, Mario Party, Super Smash Brothers, etc.) or at best your basic franchise cash-in game (Luigi's Mansion and maybe Metroid Prime). Maybe you could add Eternal Darkness to the original games list, though Nintendo didn't develop it, and it was promised to N64 owners for quite a while before its port to the Cube...
IMO this is the pretty obvious reason for the Gamecube selling so poorly compared to the N64, as its current total sales are something like 33 million. The Gamecube hovers around half that, and its sales rate is dropping in most territories... Maybe its last year or so will see a doubling of total sales, but I really can't see how with Nintendo focusing so little game development on it, and only a handful of major third party exclusives still to come. Various fanboy claims aside, most gamers don't seem to be willing to rebuy the games they already own over and over (with some sports games being an obvious exception), so the system(s) with the most games variety always do better business. Though in some ways the Cube has better third party support (and variety from that), it also has a lot smaller variety of new games from Nintendo. Well, at least it did better in Japan this generation, right?
Time was, game companies used to build franchises on a particular platform. It was one of the cool things about the whole Nintendo v Sega thing. Now MS and Sony have come along with their bottomless pits of cash and ruined the whole thing... and you're helping them.
Super Monkey Ball came out in the arcades first, on stock Naomi (basically Dreamcast+Additional RAM) hardware. The franchise wasn't built for any platform but Dreamcast, so you should consider yourself lucky enough that you got A CROSSPLATFORM RELEASE of it on the Cube as it is.
And please, cut the console wars crap. Nobody's a jerk for not buying the Gamecube, and Nintendo's been ripping people off for far too long to not add one of your silly dollar signs to their name, too...
A problem with that is cartridge expenses are murder on small developers. Another problem is that non-franchise/non-sequel games simply don't sell to GBA owners in any real numbers.
Like any RPG, Star Wars (at least the old-school West End one, I haven't played the newer one) was whatever the players and GMs wanted to make of it. None of the games I ran had more than a Jedi or two in them, and my players spent much of their time running from the Empire's gigantic army, rather than just "killing more stormtroopers". Basically I made my games a lot like the films (and like what the RPG books recommended) - it sounds like your GM ran the campaign as a powergaming Monty Haul thing.:D
Re:Why I dislike Halo (and all modern console game
on
Halo 2 Goes Gold
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· Score: 1
Please. Fighting games like the DOA or Virtua Fighter series, racing games like the Burnout series or Rallisport Challenge, etc. in no way feature framerate chop of any kind. The 60 refresh rate is plenty for a game with a consisten framerate (which is the real problem, and also affects plenty of PC games too).
And you haven't had to play console games with NTSC since the Dreamcast was released back in 1999 (which supported standard VGA monitors just fine).
That's basically what Nintendo already tried with GBA-GC connectivity. It bombed pretty badly, and not just for cost reasons - most games are primarily played single-player style, and this kind of control mechanism just doesn't do that very well. Why is it suddenly going to work now?
You know, sometimes you wonder just how effective stuff like car advertising on television is... and then you read something like this and realize that it works like magic on some people.
So unlike Nader and the Greens, the Libertarians draw from both parties. I am not sure about the Greens, but recent polls about Nadar have shown that he gets about half his potential votes from undecided voters (people that wouldn't vote otherwise at this point), a quarter from Democrats, and a quarter from Republicans. I originally kind of expected what you are saying, but it doesn't appear to be true - just Democrat "spoiler" propoganda most likely. A lot of Republicans and Democrats are soft supporters of their party, at best...
DOAXBV: A woman (admittedly without clothing) who is completely shadowed (or blurred through water) is not what I would call a depiction of nudity. You see less than what you do with some of the bikinis in the game - but never nipples, anus, or pussy. That isn't real nudity, and regardless two seconds of a cinema scene is a pretty lame example. This is PG-rated "intro to a Bond movie" nudity at best, and is nothing like the obvious, prominent nudity in BMXXX or the Guy Game.
N.U.D.E.: Every American preview I have read mentions that the game doesn't feature ANY nudity at all (good to see you know something about the subject)! And come on - that game wasn't even released in the US. Even if it did have nudity (like some Japanese PS2 games), Japan's standards about nudity are very different. The official Nintendo magazine there had freaking cartoonish nudity (at least if DOAXBV is nudity) on the cover back in the 80s, and plenty of Famicom and Super Famicom games (you know, back when all sorts of third party developers worked mainly on Nintendo systems) did too.
And I'll continue for you: DOA3 shows a FEMALE BUTT for a second or so, completely covered by mist! Wow! That is totally excessive nudity! Good thing Nintendo doesn't use individual second-long butt shots to sell their games like MS and Sony do!
No argument on the blood and gore - since I was never arguing about that to begin with.
Make that gamers of ages 13 to 18. Anyone older than that appreciates what Nintendo does - GOOD games that doesn't need excessive violence, blood and nudity.
Yeah, because the Xbox and PS2 game libraries are just filled with nudity!
AFAIK, the PS2 has the same number of games with nudity as the GC - a whole whopping ONE game (Guy Game on the former, BMXXX with nudity on the latter). Xbox has a lot more, though - TWO (it has both of those games).
Good strawman argument otherwise, though. And I am sure everyone older than 18 buys games solely on 'good gameplay' (which in this case, apparently means "yet another remake of some game we all played a decade ago, because I really only buy games from a familiar franchise") - isn't that some kind of requirement to vote?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because other than for this woman, coffee is never, ever spilled. Hadn't been spilled for the whole history of its existence.
If you are planning to sell coffee (or anything else), you can't assume an extremely common mistake will never occur. That is negligent.
You gotta get some kind of petition going to make that the new Slashdot slogan. So, so true.
(Hilarious too, but I bet you knew that...)
[Insert cliche "If I had modpoints" line here]
Have any DS release titles been shown that have graphics comparable to WaveRace64 (which was what, the second domestic N64 release?), never mind a "lot better"? I certainly haven't seen any.
And apparently games like Ridge Racer DS already have framerate issues.
You are probably right about the 3D using lots of PSP battery life, but let's not pretend the DS has demonstrated any real graphics prowness (yet).
Maybe someone should notice that there are some kickass games beyond those on the PS2. :D
Likewise, there are some kickass games beyond those on the GC (and the obligatory PC game DOOM3).
GTA3 and up all use the Renderware engine, licensed by Criterion (who is now owned by EA). So Rockstar would need EA's position to release the source...which kind of seems unlikely to me.
You can probably get your PS2 fixed for free (minus shipping), assuming you live in the US. Sony lost a class action lawsuit because of their crappy drives, so they fix them for free as a punishment. Check out the Disc Read Error Sony Repair FAQ here (no direct linking allowed).
And like others noted, you are pretty wrong on your Xbox complaint. This is to prevent cheating, which 95% of Live users are very, very happy to support!
I mean licensed games like from television shows, films, Disney, etc., of course. It's been a long time since any major console had to worry about unlicensed games, but if you know a better term for what I mean, please share!
It appears just about all the good ideas in 2D have been taken, which is why you get so many ports, sequels, and adaptations of existing franchises into existing game engines.
See, I just don't agree with that, if nothing else because the old NES had a bigger 2D game variety than the GBA does, IMO. Some ideas, some nascent evolutionary paths, have been adandoned (ex: Solar Jetman).
But an even bigger problem is that these new 2D games are usually worse than the old 2D games. And where is Nintendo's new Super Mario World for GBA? Where is their new Link to the Past? With a couple of exceptions (like you mentioned, Made in Wario is pretty good), Nintendo simply isn't offering anything remotely innovative or even as high quality as their old games (unless it is an exact port of those games, of which there are plenty!). Nintendo is treading water with the GBA, going only for their traditional safe narrow markets (like you pointed out, this is nostalgia buffs and young children). People didn't love the NES or SNES games only because they were children, we loved them because they were innovative, excellent games. If Nintendo really starts to make those games again, maybe then we can give them some kudos for the GBA.
Yeah, all those things have really set the gaming world on fire! :D
(Admittedly the GBA has done well, but one look at its library consisting almost entirely of ports and various licensed games shows who its market is.)
Meanwhile, what has poor old Nintendo done? They've hooked up with Intelligent Systems (Paper Mario GC, Advance Wars I and II for GBA) and Retro Studios (Metroid: Prime). Surely they got in the ground floor with these companies too, and so didn't have to pay a mint for them.
:D (A list of most of their games can be found here. Most of it is in Japanese, but the links and pictures are obvious enough.)
The rest of your post was pretty good, but this claim is just silly. Intelligent Systems has been making games for Nintendo for a very long time. Most of its experienced staff worked for the company when it was known as R&D1, under Gumpei Yokoi. They are Nintendo's first developmental team - they even created the Gameboy! Not only that, but Metroid, Fire Emblem, Famicom Wars (Advance Wars' ancestor, obviously), the BattleClash series (the second one was quite good and underrated, IMO), Excitebike, and lots more. Don't let the semi-newish name fool you - Intelligent Systems is an old school Nintendo internal team. I guess you could say Nintendo did get in on the ground floor, just two decades ago.
Retro Studios was created by Nintendo, too, just much more recently. Most of the staff is Digipen (the North American Nintendo-supported school for videogame development) graduates, IIRC.
(Rare has already released an Xbox game, as well: Grabbed by the Ghoulies. A lot of fanboys and reviewers were pretty hard on it, but I think it is pretty cool little Rare game, just more Blast Corps than Goldeneye. And who has been saying that Conker plays poorly? Not that you can trust them that much, but every preview I have seen speaks very highly of its E3 showing.)
No, the Coward is saying that neither Nintendo or id overpromise what they offer - and that is easy because they usually don't promise or offer much more than un-inspired remakes. Seems like a fair enough statement to me.
(I am trying to avoid a flamewar here, but this is dangerous ground to tread on games.slashdot...)
I don't know why you would think this is some bizarre and unheard of accusation directed towards Nintendo. Hardcore Nintendo fans always seem to be surprised by this kind of claim, even though people are always mentioning it. The only halfway original Gamecube game to come out from Nintendo is Pikmin, right? The rest are N64/GBA ports(Animal Crossing, Made in Wario)/ remakes(Pokemon Colleseum)/ sequels(Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Mario Gold, Mario Party, Super Smash Brothers, etc.) or at best your basic franchise cash-in game (Luigi's Mansion and maybe Metroid Prime). Maybe you could add Eternal Darkness to the original games list, though Nintendo didn't develop it, and it was promised to N64 owners for quite a while before its port to the Cube...
IMO this is the pretty obvious reason for the Gamecube selling so poorly compared to the N64, as its current total sales are something like 33 million. The Gamecube hovers around half that, and its sales rate is dropping in most territories... Maybe its last year or so will see a doubling of total sales, but I really can't see how with Nintendo focusing so little game development on it, and only a handful of major third party exclusives still to come. Various fanboy claims aside, most gamers don't seem to be willing to rebuy the games they already own over and over (with some sports games being an obvious exception), so the system(s) with the most games variety always do better business. Though in some ways the Cube has better third party support (and variety from that), it also has a lot smaller variety of new games from Nintendo. Well, at least it did better in Japan this generation, right?
Super Monkey Ball originally came out for the arcades actually, no Nintendo involvement whatsoever.
i don't think it is easy to take in all that multi-national-companies-just-want-my-money attitude when you get emotionally attached to something...
That is true. But the problem is pretending that Nintendo isn't one of these greedy multinationals because of some kind of silly fanboyism.
Time was, game companies used to build franchises on a particular platform. It was one of the cool things about the whole Nintendo v Sega thing. Now MS and Sony have come along with their bottomless pits of cash and ruined the whole thing... and you're helping them.
Super Monkey Ball came out in the arcades first, on stock Naomi (basically Dreamcast+Additional RAM) hardware. The franchise wasn't built for any platform but Dreamcast, so you should consider yourself lucky enough that you got A CROSSPLATFORM RELEASE of it on the Cube as it is.
And please, cut the console wars crap. Nobody's a jerk for not buying the Gamecube, and Nintendo's been ripping people off for far too long to not add one of your silly dollar signs to their name, too...
A problem with that is cartridge expenses are murder on small developers. Another problem is that non-franchise/non-sequel games simply don't sell to GBA owners in any real numbers.
Ctrl-Page up/down works very nicely, as does the already mentioned Ctrl-Tab...
Like any RPG, Star Wars (at least the old-school West End one, I haven't played the newer one) was whatever the players and GMs wanted to make of it. None of the games I ran had more than a Jedi or two in them, and my players spent much of their time running from the Empire's gigantic army, rather than just "killing more stormtroopers". Basically I made my games a lot like the films (and like what the RPG books recommended) - it sounds like your GM ran the campaign as a powergaming Monty Haul thing. :D
Please. Fighting games like the DOA or Virtua Fighter series, racing games like the Burnout series or Rallisport Challenge, etc. in no way feature framerate chop of any kind. The 60 refresh rate is plenty for a game with a consisten framerate (which is the real problem, and also affects plenty of PC games too).
And you haven't had to play console games with NTSC since the Dreamcast was released back in 1999 (which supported standard VGA monitors just fine).
That's basically what Nintendo already tried with GBA-GC connectivity. It bombed pretty badly, and not just for cost reasons - most games are primarily played single-player style, and this kind of control mechanism just doesn't do that very well. Why is it suddenly going to work now?
You know, sometimes you wonder just how effective stuff like car advertising on television is... and then you read something like this and realize that it works like magic on some people.
So unlike Nader and the Greens, the Libertarians draw from both parties.
I am not sure about the Greens, but recent polls about Nadar have shown that he gets about half his potential votes from undecided voters (people that wouldn't vote otherwise at this point), a quarter from Democrats, and a quarter from Republicans. I originally kind of expected what you are saying, but it doesn't appear to be true - just Democrat "spoiler" propoganda most likely. A lot of Republicans and Democrats are soft supporters of their party, at best...
DOAXBV:
A woman (admittedly without clothing) who is completely shadowed (or blurred through water) is not what I would call a depiction of nudity. You see less than what you do with some of the bikinis in the game - but never nipples, anus, or pussy. That isn't real nudity, and regardless two seconds of a cinema scene is a pretty lame example. This is PG-rated "intro to a Bond movie" nudity at best, and is nothing like the obvious, prominent nudity in BMXXX or the Guy Game.
N.U.D.E.:
Every American preview I have read mentions that the game doesn't feature ANY nudity at all (good to see you know something about the subject)! And come on - that game wasn't even released in the US. Even if it did have nudity (like some Japanese PS2 games), Japan's standards about nudity are very different. The official Nintendo magazine there had freaking cartoonish nudity (at least if DOAXBV is nudity) on the cover back in the 80s, and plenty of Famicom and Super Famicom games (you know, back when all sorts of third party developers worked mainly on Nintendo systems) did too.
And I'll continue for you: DOA3 shows a FEMALE BUTT for a second or so, completely covered by mist! Wow! That is totally excessive nudity! Good thing Nintendo doesn't use individual second-long butt shots to sell their games like MS and Sony do!
No argument on the blood and gore - since I was never arguing about that to begin with.
THQ hasn't put out a game I've wanted to play since either the NES or SNES days I can't really remember.
Surely you have at least tried out one of the latest two Grand Theft Auto games... (since Rockstar Games = THQ)
Oh yeah, and neither of those games show more than straight T&A. Strictly R-rated stuff here...
Make that gamers of ages 13 to 18. Anyone older than that appreciates what Nintendo does - GOOD games that doesn't need excessive violence, blood and nudity.
Yeah, because the Xbox and PS2 game libraries are just filled with nudity!
AFAIK, the PS2 has the same number of games with nudity as the GC - a whole whopping ONE game (Guy Game on the former, BMXXX with nudity on the latter). Xbox has a lot more, though - TWO (it has both of those games).
Good strawman argument otherwise, though. And I am sure everyone older than 18 buys games solely on 'good gameplay' (which in this case, apparently means "yet another remake of some game we all played a decade ago, because I really only buy games from a familiar franchise") - isn't that some kind of requirement to vote?
Why does "just a game system" ship with a wireless chat program?