The article probably should have noted that Metal Slug 3 did come to the PS2 in Japan - home market tastes don't even figure into this decision. It doesn't make sense to stay on a single-platform for games like Metal Slug 3 (which are easy to port). What SNK is doing makes perfect financial sense, as the demographics for the PS2 and Xbox are very similar. It is just easy extra cash.
And it is important to note that the only reason that Metal Slug 3 is Xbox exclusive in the US is because of Sony of America. They wouldn't approve its release for PS2, since it isn't a 3D game (and SNK isn't as powerful as a company like Capcom or Konami, which can force the stuff through anyway). These are the same geniuses that prevented a US PSX release of Radiant Silvergun, DoDonPachi, Metal Slug 1 + 2, and plenty more classic games. Much of which to some extent lead to the practical death of shmups in the US, IMO...
But as long as you aren't directly competing with a first-party game, MS will happily approve any good game (and Metal Slug 3 certainly qualifies) for the Xbox.
And as others noted, your claim that SNK fans wouldn't generally be into Xbox is pretty silly. Where else am I going to play 'fanboy games' like the newest Panzer Dragoon, JSRF, DOA series, Ninja Gaiden, Steel Batallion/Tekki, Capcom vs. SNK 2 with online play outside of Japan, newer Japanese shmups with online scoreboards, for a while Shin Megami Tensei 3, etc. Big gamers that would be traditionally into SNK are very unlikely to only own one console.
AFAIK, they first made the joke on April Fools 2001 . MS purchased them in June of 2000. Is is very possible the joke goes back much further than the website, though I can find no evidence of it (and it would make a poor April Fools joke if so). Any linkage I should be aware of?
(Google cache of the currently unavailable offical page here)
Some interesting analysis - shame about your current troll moderation.
I do concur that Israel is happy with the way things are going, having intentionally misled its citizens (and by extension, the rest of the world) to support the us war effort. But I am not sure you can really say the US did it solely because Israel wanted it. How exactly could Israel have 'twisted the arm' of the US into entering a costly war? i can see some vague possibilities (Dubya wanted vengeance, so he was easy to push?), but they do seem unlikely. I know the neocons are vehemently pro-israel, but it still seems to be stretching things too much. Seems to me more like just an additional justification to get everyone on board...
I personally find the whole 'Iraq switching to the Euro for oil exports' thing to be a more likely primary cause, considering this administration did a similar attack (if much more low-key) on the newly Euro-friendly Venezuela.
I am sure some of these intelligence agencies knew that the kind of WMDs that Iraq was given by the US have a certain 'best if used by' date on them. They wouldn't have been still usable at this point of time - they simply don't last 20 some years and remain effective.
This is ignoring the fact that if "dozens of countries" believed already that Iraq had these WMDs, why did the USA have to go to so much trouble to try and prove this to them? And only after many straight-out lies did many of these countries even believe we could be correct, and they still weren't willing to help in most cases.
You are wrong. It is mid- to late-20s males actually. Though obviously different publishers will aim more at lower (EA, Nintendo) or higher (some PC devs perhaps) markets.
btw, adobe if you had not noticed is in the software business....
it is kinda easy to rake in the dough on popular software when it costs about one billionth the cost to print it package it and ship it than the price of the software at retail.
Umm, that is kind of the point nicholas was making originally, you will notice.
Do Apple fanboys even read complete posts if they suspect it is anti-Apple? (Which the original comment was certainly not - flamebait my ass...)
(I am far from an expert on Islam, so I am not going to go too far into details I don't feel comfortable stating.)
Ignoring the fact that you are badly exaggerating (or at least mixing together different countries' customs into one big definition), most of this has nothing to do with Islam really. The current dominant strain of Islam can seem oppressive by Western standards (largely because it is a response to Western cultural imperialism, IMO, so of course it is opposed), but there are pretty liberal Islamic nations now and in the past. Look at much of the Middle East during the European Medieval Age, for example.
And some elements of Islam are still massively less repressive than what you might find in Christianity. For example, the fact you aren't supposed to convert your children just because it is your religion - you wait until they are old and educated enough to make their own choice.
To be fair, I do think Grabbed by the Ghoulies is awfully underrated. Not a AAA Goldeneye-level game by any means, but it features some great puzzle design in the later parts of the game, some funny writing, wonderful music, and a great art style. More of a Blast Corp level game.
SFA did not interest me in the slightest. The demo alone was enough to deter me.
My (limited) understanding is that most, if not all, of these porn laws were created by the Americans in charge of rebuilding the country after WWII. Extremely sexually explicit Japanese art goes back at least a few hundred years, if not much longer. The American occupation was the first thing to really dampen that tradition at all, AFAIK. Doing some brief googling, an article describing some of this art is here, and a (pretty explicit) example can be found here.
Not sure I would really say the they 'screwed them up', per se, but the laws are unfortunate, and obviously did nothing to reduce the impact or prevelance of porn there.
Though I do like my Nforce2 board, I have had some weird glitches. Heavy hard drive usage seems to bring W2K to its knees (which was helped a little by using generic IDE drivers), I get some weird stutters with sound, and the network copying performance is shockingly poor (worse than hard drive usage by far - W2K ceases being responsive to a large extent). I also get some weird random reboots, but that seems to be an obscure problem with my Radeon 9600 and newer ATI drivers.
Ah, modern PCs. I am thinking if I throw in some PCI cards (network card, sound card) from my older PC I might resolve some of these problems.
Youre thinking to specific, mr genius - and why so defensive?
Eh, my Nintendo fanboy alarm was going off, so I panicked a bit.;)
Nintendo has how many millions(billions?) in the bank? Maybe the N64 didnt tickle your fancy, and wasnt much compared to the PS/PS2 successes, but, yes I would consider Nintendo a successful company in Japan over the last 20 yrs.
Billions is correct. And to the contrary, I loved my N64, purchased at launch - never even bothered with the PSX (though I did play around with a few PSX games via emulation), and I didn't pick up a Saturn until around two years ago. As I did mention, Nintendo certainly did make some innovative stuff in that era. I will concede that if you focus on the past 20 years, your comment is correct.
Umm.. The Japanese game market and world PC game market are starting to slide - 2 markets usually on the cutting edge of gaming...hmmm no sign?
And even if those arent direct signs, that does NOT mean the bubble won't burst. That's why they call it a bubble. POP!
It has been a long time since the PC and (to a lesser extent) the Japanese market have been on the cutting edge. I say this as a huge fan of PC gaming and much of the quirky and/or old-school Japanese gaming designs (big fan of Sega and shmups, for example).
Anyway, the Japanese market is falling down for many reasons, not the least of which is the increasing dominance of Keitai (mobile/portable gaming). Can't see that happening in the USA - the demographics are very different when to comes to commuting, the importance of ownership helps out too (as the Gamespy article I mentioned points out), and just the nature of play in our culture (Americans like to do it at home, generally, with friends). The newly-allowed used game sales are most destructive to Japan's traditionally strong gaming markets (linear RPGs), whereas the strongest selling genres in America are stuff like sports games, which are massively resistent to that. And though neither the Japanese nor American economy is doing well, it will be quite a few years before the USA falls as much as Japan has. But the main point is that the Western console games market is growing, has been for quite some time, and has shown no signs of that stopping. We simply aren't at a saturation point, and no entertainment form seems poised to intrude on interactive gaming. And let's be honest - Japan overall hasn't been putting out all that great stuff, compared to maybe six years ago. The lack of risk-taking and cultural myopia ("We need to make games easier!") prevents new market expansion...
PC gaming is doing poorly for a number of reasons: a comparatively limited control scheme (only good for FPS and strategy games), more competition from older games (Ex: I would rather emulate or play Alpha Centauri in many cases than play a new FPS game), developer/publisher irresponsibility (the bugginess of PC games is criminal), driver issues generally getting worse and not better, and just a huge lack of innovation overall. Seriously, name a big PC release in the next year that isn't a RTS, FPS, or MMORPG.
And of course a bubble could pop. We could also we wiped out by an asteroid tomorrow. That doesn't mean either are all that likely.:D
I'm not talking about the current generation here, Snippy. Iwata is talking about the Future. There needs to be innovation or there may be a crash - thats the point. And why are my standards unreasonable just because I'm sick of WW2 games?
Well, why isn't he talking about the current generation? Both MS and Sony have put out more innovative and influential games than anything Nintendo has attempted, and I can't understand why.
Being a huge fan of Sega, I love innovative games. Don't get me wrong - I agree that innovation is massively important, if perhaps occasionally overrated. (Oftentimes the innovator loses m
I agree. Remember, the gaming market is shrinking in Japan, Nintendo's constant stomping ground for the past 20 yrs or so. I think Mr. Iwata is just realizing that the same thing could happen in the US, and that wouldnt be good.
N64 did shit business in Japan. And I doubt he thinks the same thing would happen in the USA, because there is no sign of that happening (outside of PC gaming, of course). See Gamespy's article with the CESA guy today for reasons why.
Don't believe me? Imagine the gaming industry without Nintendo. Innovation seems few and far between elsewhere. If I play another WW2 FPS, I will seriously barf. GTA was kinda innovative, but even that seems based on Zelda (with hookers!) (Point: most -not all- game companies try and ride whatever cash cow is around at the moment)
Please. Name an innovative (by your unreasonable standards) game that Nintendo has released this generation. Pikmin is just a Lemmings rip-off, Animal Crossing is just a rip-off of Harvest Moon (and was released for the N64 in Japan, so it isn't even a new game), etc.
And when did Nintendo stop riding cashcows? Pokemon (always releasing two nearly identical versions at once especially), the Mario franchise (how many Mario Party games?), etc. They have created how many new settings (or groups of characters) this generation? One?
And personally, Nintendo's complete inability to demonstrate innovative design is why I have lost interest in them. They certainly had some in the N64 days, and even moreso before then. Now it is just rehash after rehash. Their most innovative recent game, Made in Wario, has already been given a GC sequel, that just happens to be a quick cash-in GBA port. Blah.
What happens when all the 17-yr old males the industry depends on, get bored with the same old crap?
Which industry are you referring to? The American videogame industry depends on gamers in their mid- to late-20s, since that is the market's main demographic. Europe is similar. Not sure about Japan, though.
Iwata is trying to keep it new and interesting, and trying to keep the novelty of playing games alive. Rock on.
I would love for him to do this. Maybe E3 will reveal something like this, but I expect yet another Zelda64 sequel, a new Metroid game, maybe another Mario platformer, a new Pokemon spin-off, lots of hype about the 4th Star Fox game...
I am not at all a fan of DBZ and its like, and I have to agree with the above complaints about the show. I found it immensely dull, and I really tried to give it a chance. I can handle talky, pretentious animes, but only when they at least try and make the animation and visual direction interesting, which hack didn't even approach AFAIK.
(Part of the problem is probably that it reminded me too much of its predecessor, Noir, which I was stupid enough to stick it out the whole way, because someone lied that "the ending is amazing". At least Noir pretended to try and be visually interesting, not that it helped it too much.)
Obviously some people are really going to click with a show like hack, and that is quite alright by me, but please don't pretend that anyone who dislikes it is an ADD-adled freak.:D
The quality of games is already decreasing at an alarming rate (ever since 2000 or so, it's been to the point where there are maybe one or two decent games a year)
I totally agree with the rest of what you wrote, but I can't see how you could possibly justify this statement. Even this year so far (historically the worst time for new games) has seen a number of outstanding new games. Some of which (like Ninja Gaiden or Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow) are even the current pinnacles of their respective genres. Several genres have seen multiple AAA games released in them already. And the rest of the year is filled with dozens of games that look like they could be great, nevermind decent.
The only way I could see your statement being true is if you only like one or two niche genres - maybe Japanese RPGs? Can't remember the last one I thought was truly good (maybe Skies of Arcadia on DC, with caveats), though I don't play many of them admittedly.
A funny thing is that does actually occur in the MS-published Halo 2. The first trailer for the game shows nukes falling from orbit to hit the Earth, and a pretty blatant one lands in Redmond.:D
That's because what the US administration says is news. CNN doesn't claim it's the truth. They are only reporting what is said.
Well that's fine, as long as they acknowledge that. Oftentimes they serve as little more than government propoganda. And they could certainly question the veracity of the government's claims a little more strongly and often - the various US news organizations pretty much gave the White House a free pass on the whole "Iraq has WMDs, really!" thing before we invaded.
I don't feel qualified enough to explain this again (AND since something like this comes up everytime an iTunes article pops up, the experts might be sick of explaining it), but you are wrong. You either don't understand the specific technology or perhaps how sound/music works.
It only makes logical sense if you don't know what is actually going on - do some reading or research before you spout this kind of nonsense again, please.:)
Trust me, it really doesn't make sense. All I can figure (being an American myself) is that most of these people more or less think of violence as a good thing (or perhaps a not bad thing), at least secretly. Many of our cultural heroes were very violent people, our various holidays often praise violence in some ways or another, etc. Using violent force to solve problems is perhaps just the American way. I mean, just look at world news for obvious examples.:(
But there is a whole raft of crap that is stuck in films because the "filmmakers" don't think we as an audience will stay focused on the film without someone on screen using "F***" in all of its grammatical forms every 10 seconds.
I keep seeing references to this kind of thing in the comments, and I can't think of any (and certainly not many) films were it was obviously gratuitis. Could you give some examples?
I concluded that it's neither the content (immature) nor the context (locker room) of video games that turns most women off of them, it's the cultural stigma.
Exactly. I can't think of any females I have met that tried out gaming for any serious length of time (ie more than a couple hours) and then later stopped. The women who don't game probably have never really tried it, or at least tried the type of game that would catch their interest.
And too often the people that make this kind of claim (that females don't play games) are ignoring massive segments of gaming, like PC Flash-based games. Maybe a lot of women don't play the more classic examples of games (Halo, GTA3, etc.), but that doesn't meant they don't play games at all...
Slashdot Mirror
The article probably should have noted that Metal Slug 3 did come to the PS2 in Japan - home market tastes don't even figure into this decision. It doesn't make sense to stay on a single-platform for games like Metal Slug 3 (which are easy to port). What SNK is doing makes perfect financial sense, as the demographics for the PS2 and Xbox are very similar. It is just easy extra cash.
And it is important to note that the only reason that Metal Slug 3 is Xbox exclusive in the US is because of Sony of America. They wouldn't approve its release for PS2, since it isn't a 3D game (and SNK isn't as powerful as a company like Capcom or Konami, which can force the stuff through anyway). These are the same geniuses that prevented a US PSX release of Radiant Silvergun, DoDonPachi, Metal Slug 1 + 2, and plenty more classic games. Much of which to some extent lead to the practical death of shmups in the US, IMO...
But as long as you aren't directly competing with a first-party game, MS will happily approve any good game (and Metal Slug 3 certainly qualifies) for the Xbox.
And as others noted, your claim that SNK fans wouldn't generally be into Xbox is pretty silly. Where else am I going to play 'fanboy games' like the newest Panzer Dragoon, JSRF, DOA series, Ninja Gaiden, Steel Batallion/Tekki, Capcom vs. SNK 2 with online play outside of Japan, newer Japanese shmups with online scoreboards, for a while Shin Megami Tensei 3, etc. Big gamers that would be traditionally into SNK are very unlikely to only own one console.
AFAIK, they first made the joke on April Fools 2001 . MS purchased them in June of 2000. Is is very possible the joke goes back much further than the website, though I can find no evidence of it (and it would make a poor April Fools joke if so). Any linkage I should be aware of?
(Google cache of the currently unavailable offical page here)
Some interesting analysis - shame about your current troll moderation.
I do concur that Israel is happy with the way things are going, having intentionally misled its citizens (and by extension, the rest of the world) to support the us war effort. But I am not sure you can really say the US did it solely because Israel wanted it. How exactly could Israel have 'twisted the arm' of the US into entering a costly war? i can see some vague possibilities (Dubya wanted vengeance, so he was easy to push?), but they do seem unlikely. I know the neocons are vehemently pro-israel, but it still seems to be stretching things too much. Seems to me more like just an additional justification to get everyone on board...
I personally find the whole 'Iraq switching to the Euro for oil exports' thing to be a more likely primary cause, considering this administration did a similar attack (if much more low-key) on the newly Euro-friendly Venezuela.
I am sure some of these intelligence agencies knew that the kind of WMDs that Iraq was given by the US have a certain 'best if used by' date on them. They wouldn't have been still usable at this point of time - they simply don't last 20 some years and remain effective.
This is ignoring the fact that if "dozens of countries" believed already that Iraq had these WMDs, why did the USA have to go to so much trouble to try and prove this to them? And only after many straight-out lies did many of these countries even believe we could be correct, and they still weren't willing to help in most cases.
Actually, Pimps at Sea was post-MS - it was announced as an Xbox game, remember? And post-Halo release (since it featured a Grunt) as well.
You are wrong. It is mid- to late-20s males actually. Though obviously different publishers will aim more at lower (EA, Nintendo) or higher (some PC devs perhaps) markets.
btw, adobe if you had not noticed is in the software business....
it is kinda easy to rake in the dough on popular software when it costs about one billionth the cost to print it package it and ship it than the price of the software at retail.
Umm, that is kind of the point nicholas was making originally, you will notice.
Do Apple fanboys even read complete posts if they suspect it is anti-Apple? (Which the original comment was certainly not - flamebait my ass...)
(I am far from an expert on Islam, so I am not going to go too far into details I don't feel comfortable stating.)
Ignoring the fact that you are badly exaggerating (or at least mixing together different countries' customs into one big definition), most of this has nothing to do with Islam really. The current dominant strain of Islam can seem oppressive by Western standards (largely because it is a response to Western cultural imperialism, IMO, so of course it is opposed), but there are pretty liberal Islamic nations now and in the past. Look at much of the Middle East during the European Medieval Age, for example.
And some elements of Islam are still massively less repressive than what you might find in Christianity. For example, the fact you aren't supposed to convert your children just because it is your religion - you wait until they are old and educated enough to make their own choice.
Heh heh.
To be fair, I do think Grabbed by the Ghoulies is awfully underrated. Not a AAA Goldeneye-level game by any means, but it features some great puzzle design in the later parts of the game, some funny writing, wonderful music, and a great art style. More of a Blast Corp level game.
SFA did not interest me in the slightest. The demo alone was enough to deter me.
My (limited) understanding is that most, if not all, of these porn laws were created by the Americans in charge of rebuilding the country after WWII. Extremely sexually explicit Japanese art goes back at least a few hundred years, if not much longer. The American occupation was the first thing to really dampen that tradition at all, AFAIK. Doing some brief googling, an article describing some of this art is here, and a (pretty explicit) example can be found here.
Not sure I would really say the they 'screwed them up', per se, but the laws are unfortunate, and obviously did nothing to reduce the impact or prevelance of porn there.
Though I do like my Nforce2 board, I have had some weird glitches. Heavy hard drive usage seems to bring W2K to its knees (which was helped a little by using generic IDE drivers), I get some weird stutters with sound, and the network copying performance is shockingly poor (worse than hard drive usage by far - W2K ceases being responsive to a large extent). I also get some weird random reboots, but that seems to be an obscure problem with my Radeon 9600 and newer ATI drivers.
Ah, modern PCs. I am thinking if I throw in some PCI cards (network card, sound card) from my older PC I might resolve some of these problems.
Do you know anything about the Japanese gaming industry?
Free Radical obviously took all of their gifted staff and left behind the second string.
So when will Free Radical actually release a game that justifies a statement like that? Two failed attempts and counting...
(And something like three Rare members started Free Radical - don't buy into the false hype, please.)
Just one more example of Kojima's 'great' game design skills...
Apparently you don't realize that IBM already has its own Java compiler, which at least for a while generated faster code than Sun's.
The compiler you are referring to is based on Sun's code and is licensed. If Sun kills Java, IBM's Java compiler dies too.
Youre thinking to specific, mr genius - and why so defensive?
;)
:D
Eh, my Nintendo fanboy alarm was going off, so I panicked a bit.
Nintendo has how many millions(billions?) in the bank? Maybe the N64 didnt tickle your fancy, and wasnt much compared to the PS/PS2 successes, but, yes I would consider Nintendo a successful company in Japan over the last 20 yrs.
Billions is correct. And to the contrary, I loved my N64, purchased at launch - never even bothered with the PSX (though I did play around with a few PSX games via emulation), and I didn't pick up a Saturn until around two years ago. As I did mention, Nintendo certainly did make some innovative stuff in that era. I will concede that if you focus on the past 20 years, your comment is correct.
Umm.. The Japanese game market and world PC game market are starting to slide - 2 markets usually on the cutting edge of gaming...hmmm no sign?
And even if those arent direct signs, that does NOT mean the bubble won't burst. That's why they call it a bubble. POP!
It has been a long time since the PC and (to a lesser extent) the Japanese market have been on the cutting edge. I say this as a huge fan of PC gaming and much of the quirky and/or old-school Japanese gaming designs (big fan of Sega and shmups, for example).
Anyway, the Japanese market is falling down for many reasons, not the least of which is the increasing dominance of Keitai (mobile/portable gaming). Can't see that happening in the USA - the demographics are very different when to comes to commuting, the importance of ownership helps out too (as the Gamespy article I mentioned points out), and just the nature of play in our culture (Americans like to do it at home, generally, with friends). The newly-allowed used game sales are most destructive to Japan's traditionally strong gaming markets (linear RPGs), whereas the strongest selling genres in America are stuff like sports games, which are massively resistent to that. And though neither the Japanese nor American economy is doing well, it will be quite a few years before the USA falls as much as Japan has. But the main point is that the Western console games market is growing, has been for quite some time, and has shown no signs of that stopping. We simply aren't at a saturation point, and no entertainment form seems poised to intrude on interactive gaming. And let's be honest - Japan overall hasn't been putting out all that great stuff, compared to maybe six years ago. The lack of risk-taking and cultural myopia ("We need to make games easier!") prevents new market expansion...
PC gaming is doing poorly for a number of reasons: a comparatively limited control scheme (only good for FPS and strategy games), more competition from older games (Ex: I would rather emulate or play Alpha Centauri in many cases than play a new FPS game), developer/publisher irresponsibility (the bugginess of PC games is criminal), driver issues generally getting worse and not better, and just a huge lack of innovation overall. Seriously, name a big PC release in the next year that isn't a RTS, FPS, or MMORPG.
And of course a bubble could pop. We could also we wiped out by an asteroid tomorrow. That doesn't mean either are all that likely.
I'm not talking about the current generation here, Snippy. Iwata is talking about the Future. There needs to be innovation or there may be a crash - thats the point. And why are my standards unreasonable just because I'm sick of WW2 games?
Well, why isn't he talking about the current generation? Both MS and Sony have put out more innovative and influential games than anything Nintendo has attempted, and I can't understand why.
Being a huge fan of Sega, I love innovative games. Don't get me wrong - I agree that innovation is massively important, if perhaps occasionally overrated. (Oftentimes the innovator loses m
I agree.
Remember, the gaming market is shrinking in Japan, Nintendo's constant stomping ground for the past 20 yrs or so. I think Mr. Iwata is just realizing that the same thing could happen in the US, and that wouldnt be good.
N64 did shit business in Japan. And I doubt he thinks the same thing would happen in the USA, because there is no sign of that happening (outside of PC gaming, of course). See Gamespy's article with the CESA guy today for reasons why.
Don't believe me? Imagine the gaming industry without Nintendo. Innovation seems few and far between elsewhere. If I play another WW2 FPS, I will seriously barf. GTA was kinda innovative, but even that seems based on Zelda (with hookers!)
(Point: most -not all- game companies try and ride whatever cash cow is around at the moment)
Please. Name an innovative (by your unreasonable standards) game that Nintendo has released this generation. Pikmin is just a Lemmings rip-off, Animal Crossing is just a rip-off of Harvest Moon (and was released for the N64 in Japan, so it isn't even a new game), etc.
And when did Nintendo stop riding cashcows? Pokemon (always releasing two nearly identical versions at once especially), the Mario franchise (how many Mario Party games?), etc. They have created how many new settings (or groups of characters) this generation? One?
And personally, Nintendo's complete inability to demonstrate innovative design is why I have lost interest in them. They certainly had some in the N64 days, and even moreso before then. Now it is just rehash after rehash. Their most innovative recent game, Made in Wario, has already been given a GC sequel, that just happens to be a quick cash-in GBA port. Blah.
What happens when all the 17-yr old males the industry depends on, get bored with the same old crap?
Which industry are you referring to? The American videogame industry depends on gamers in their mid- to late-20s, since that is the market's main demographic. Europe is similar. Not sure about Japan, though.
Iwata is trying to keep it new and interesting, and trying to keep the novelty of playing games alive. Rock on.
I would love for him to do this. Maybe E3 will reveal something like this, but I expect yet another Zelda64 sequel, a new Metroid game, maybe another Mario platformer, a new Pokemon spin-off, lots of hype about the 4th Star Fox game...
I am not at all a fan of DBZ and its like, and I have to agree with the above complaints about the show. I found it immensely dull, and I really tried to give it a chance. I can handle talky, pretentious animes, but only when they at least try and make the animation and visual direction interesting, which hack didn't even approach AFAIK.
:D
(Part of the problem is probably that it reminded me too much of its predecessor, Noir, which I was stupid enough to stick it out the whole way, because someone lied that "the ending is amazing". At least Noir pretended to try and be visually interesting, not that it helped it too much.)
Obviously some people are really going to click with a show like hack, and that is quite alright by me, but please don't pretend that anyone who dislikes it is an ADD-adled freak.
The quality of games is already decreasing at an alarming rate (ever since 2000 or so, it's been to the point where there are maybe one or two decent games a year)
I totally agree with the rest of what you wrote, but I can't see how you could possibly justify this statement. Even this year so far (historically the worst time for new games) has seen a number of outstanding new games. Some of which (like Ninja Gaiden or Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow) are even the current pinnacles of their respective genres. Several genres have seen multiple AAA games released in them already. And the rest of the year is filled with dozens of games that look like they could be great, nevermind decent.
The only way I could see your statement being true is if you only like one or two niche genres - maybe Japanese RPGs? Can't remember the last one I thought was truly good (maybe Skies of Arcadia on DC, with caveats), though I don't play many of them admittedly.
A funny thing is that does actually occur in the MS-published Halo 2. The first trailer for the game shows nukes falling from orbit to hit the Earth, and a pretty blatant one lands in Redmond. :D
That's because what the US administration says is news. CNN doesn't claim it's the truth. They are only reporting what is said.
Well that's fine, as long as they acknowledge that. Oftentimes they serve as little more than government propoganda. And they could certainly question the veracity of the government's claims a little more strongly and often - the various US news organizations pretty much gave the White House a free pass on the whole "Iraq has WMDs, really!" thing before we invaded.
I don't feel qualified enough to explain this again (AND since something like this comes up everytime an iTunes article pops up, the experts might be sick of explaining it), but you are wrong. You either don't understand the specific technology or perhaps how sound/music works.
:)
It only makes logical sense if you don't know what is actually going on - do some reading or research before you spout this kind of nonsense again, please.
Trust me, it really doesn't make sense. All I can figure (being an American myself) is that most of these people more or less think of violence as a good thing (or perhaps a not bad thing), at least secretly. Many of our cultural heroes were very violent people, our various holidays often praise violence in some ways or another, etc. Using violent force to solve problems is perhaps just the American way. I mean, just look at world news for obvious examples. :(
But there is a whole raft of crap that is stuck in films because the "filmmakers" don't think we as an audience will stay focused on the film without someone on screen using "F***" in all of its grammatical forms every 10 seconds.
I keep seeing references to this kind of thing in the comments, and I can't think of any (and certainly not many) films were it was obviously gratuitis. Could you give some examples?
I concluded that it's neither the content (immature) nor the context (locker room) of video games that turns most women off of them, it's the cultural stigma.
Exactly. I can't think of any females I have met that tried out gaming for any serious length of time (ie more than a couple hours) and then later stopped. The women who don't game probably have never really tried it, or at least tried the type of game that would catch their interest.
And too often the people that make this kind of claim (that females don't play games) are ignoring massive segments of gaming, like PC Flash-based games. Maybe a lot of women don't play the more classic examples of games (Halo, GTA3, etc.), but that doesn't meant they don't play games at all...